VI


Madeleine was spared the ordeal of confession; it was six weeks
before she saw her husband again. He telegraphed at six o'clock that
he had a small-pox patient and could not subject her to the risk of
contagion. The disease most dreaded in San Francisco had arrived some
time before and the pest house outside the city limits was already
crowded. The next day yellow flags appeared before several houses.
Before a week passed they had multiplied all over the city. People
went about with visible camphor bags suspended from their necks, and
Madeleine heard the galloping death wagon at all hours of the night.
Howard telegraphed frequently and sent a doctor to revaccinate her,
as the virus he had administered himself had not taken. She was not
to worry about him as he vaccinated himself every day. Finally he
commanded her to leave town, and she made a round of visits.

She spent a fortnight at Rincona, Mrs. Abbott's place at Alta, in
the San Mateo valley, and another with the Hathaways near by. Then,
after a fortnight at the different "Springs" she settled down for the
rest of the summer on the Ballinger ranch in the Santa Clara valley.
All her hostesses had house parties, there were picnics by day and
dancing or hay-rides at night. For the first time she saw the
beautiful California country; the redwood forests on the mountains,
the bare brown and golden hills, the great valleys with their forests
of oaks and madronas cleared here and there for orchard and vineyard;