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vague, as immature and unformed as the
straight little figure itself. When Snooky and Howard had seated
themselves, but one chair--at the end of the breakfast-table, opposite
Mr. Bessemer--remained vacant. "Is your sister--is Miss Travis going

to have her breakfast now? Is she got up yet?" inquired Victorine of
Howard and Snooky, as she pushed the cream pitcher out of Howard's
reach. It was significant of Mr. Bessemer's relations with his family
that Victorine did not address her question to him. "Yes, yes, she's
coming," said both the children, speaking together; and Howard added:
"Here she comes now." Travis Bessemer came in. Even in San
Francisco, where all women are more or less beautiful, Travis passed
for a beautiful girl. She was young, but tall as most men, and solidly,
almost heavily built. Her shoulders were broad, her chest was deep, her
neck round and firm. She radiated health; there were exuberance and
vitality in the very touch of her foot upon the carpet, and there was that
cleanliness about her, that freshness, that suggested a recent plunge in
the surf and a "constitutional" along the beach. One felt that here was
stamina, good physical force, and fine animal vigor. Her arms were
large, her wrists were large, and her fingers did not taper. Her hair was
of a brown so light as to be almost yellow. In fact, it would be safer to
call it yellow from the start--not golden nor flaxen, but plain, honest
yellow. The skin of her face was clean and white, except where it
flushed to a most charming pink upon her smooth, cool cheeks. Her lips
were full and red, her chin very round and a little salient. Curiously
enough, her eyes were small--small, but of the deepest, deepest brown,
and always twinkling and alight, as though she were just ready to smile
or had just done smiling, one could not say which. And nothing could
have been more delightful than these sloe-brown, glinting little eyes of
hers set off by her white skin and yellow hair. She impressed one as
being a very normal girl: nothing morbid about her, nothing nervous or
false or overwrought. You did not expect to find her introspective. You
felt sure that her mental life was not at all the result of thoughts and
reflections germinating from within, but rather of impressions and
sensations that came to her from without. There was nothing
extraordinary about Travis. She never had her vagaries, was not
moody-- depressed one day and exalted the next. She was just a good,
sweet, natural, healthy-minded, healthy-bodied girl, honest, strong,
self-reliant, and good-tempered. Though she was not yet dressed for
church, there was style in her to the pointed tips of her patent-leather
slippers. She wore a heavy black overskirt that rustled in delicious
fashion over the colored silk skirt beneath, and a white shirt-waist,

striped black, and starched to a rattling stiffness. Her neck was swathed
tight and high with a broad ribbon of white satin, while around her
waist, in place of a belt, she wore the huge dog-collar of a St.
Bernard--a chic little idea which was all her own, and of which she was
very proud. She was as trig and trim and crisp as a crack yacht: not a
pin was loose, not a seam that did not fall in its precise right line; and
with every movement there emanated from her a barely perceptible
delicious feminine odor--an odor that was in part perfume, but mostly a
subtle, vague smell, charming beyond words, that came from her hair,
her neck, her arms--her whole sweet personality. She was nineteen
years old. She sat down to breakfast and ate heartily, though with her
attention divided between Howard--who was atrociously bad, as usual
of a Sunday morning--and her father's plate. Mr. Bessemer was as like
as not to leave the table without any breakfast at all unless his fruit,
chops, and coffee were actually thrust under his nose. "Papum," she
called, speaking clear and distinct, as though to the deaf, "there's your
coffee there at your elbow; be careful, you'll tip it over. Victorine, push
his cup further on the table. Is it strong enough for you, Papum'" "Eh?
Ah, yes--yes--yes," murmured the old man, looking vaguely about him;
"coffee, to be sure"--and he emptied the cup at a single draught, hardly
knowing whether it was coffee or tea. "Now I'll take a roll," he
continued, in a monotonous murmur. "Where are the rolls? Here they
are. Hot rolls are bad for my digestion-- I ought to eat bread. I think I
eat too much. Where's my place in the paper?--always lose my place in
the paper. Clever editorials this fellow Eastman writes, unbiassed by
party prejudice--unbiassed--unbiassed." His voice died to a whisper.
The breakfast