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Updated: June 23, 2025
But I hadn't the heart to hurt Maizie; to break with her ... nor the courage to give up my position in life. So we parted. I didn't know then " "That you had a daughter?" questioned Frank. His uncle nodded. "Perhaps it would have made a difference ... perhaps not." Aleta had a week's vacation. They were playing a comedy in which she had no part.
Often Frank and Aleta climbed the winding Presidio ascent and gazed upon its growing wonders. "Beauty will come out of it all," she said one day. "Out of our travail and sorrow and sin. I wish that Norah was here. She loved beauty so!" "Perhaps she is here.... Who knows?" She looked at him startled.
Windham was a corporation lawyer. Doubtless he knew. Silently the two men made their way out of the graveyard. Frank determined to ride down town with his uncle, and then telephone to Aleta. He hadn't seen her for a week. As the car passed the Call building they noted a crowd at Third and Market streets, reading a bulletin. People seemed excited.
"Mother's mind is gone," Aleta answered, bitterly. "She doesn't even recognize me now.... But she's happy." Her laugh rang, mirthless. "Aleta," he said, sternly, "do you love this man?" "No," she said and stared at him. "What?" "I love another if you must know all about it." "Can't you marry him? Is he too poor?" asked Stanley. "Poor?" Her eyes were stars; "that wouldn't matter.
"Some day, perhaps," she spoke with sudden gravity, "I may ask you to do that." "What? Fight for you?" Bertha nodded. It was after the Olympia had been made over into a larger Tivoli Opera House that Frank met Aleta Boice. She was a member of the chorus.
The famous prima donna faced an audience which numbered upward of a hundred thousand. They thronged a joyous celebrant, dark mass on Market, Geary, Third and Kearny streets. Every window was ablaze, alive with silhouetted figures. Frank, who had engaged a window in the Monadnock Block, could not get near the entrance. So he and Aleta stood in the street.
"So" Frank was a little nonplussed "he wants you to marry him?" "No," the girl's face reddened. "No, I can't ... he's got a wife." For a moment there was silence. Then. "What did you tell the hound, Aleta?" "He's not a hound," she said evenly. "The wife won't care. She runs with other men...." Her eyes would not meet Frank's. "I haven't answered." "But your mother!"
Norah France caught Frank's arm as the celebrants eddied round them. The press was disbanding with an almost violent haste. "Where's Aleta?" asked the girl. Frank searched amid the human eddies, but in vain. "She got separated from us somehow," he said rather helplessly. They searched farther, without result. Aleta doubtless had gone home.
The dull roar of these frequent explosions was plainly discernible at the Presidio. After they had eaten Frank said good-bye to Aleta. He was going back to town. The feverish adventure of it called him. And he had learned that there were many other camps of refugees. In one of these he might find Bertha.
Eagerly she sipped her steaming coffee from a heavy crockery cup, nibbling at a bit of French bread. Then she said to him so suddenly that he almost sprang out of his chair. "Do you know that Aleta Boice loves you?" He looked at her annoyed and disturbed by the question. "No, I don't," he answered slowly. "Nor do I understand just what you're driving at, Miss France."
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