Before their faces, the ocean, in swells and scoops of ever grayer gray, ran out to catch the horizon as it fell, illumined in its lower reaches by the sun, which was sinking into the haze above the waters like a lustrous orange ball.
Southward, beyond the green head of Golden Gate Park, the yellow gray of the sand dunes and the blue gray of the sea met in a lingering, playful kiss that swept back and forth in a long shimmering line which ran on sinuously, growing fainter and fainter, till lost in the shadow of the distant cliffs.
The hour was five o'clock. At eight that night John was to leave for Los Angeles. His vacation--the only vacation of his hard-driven life--was to end, and an epoch in his existence was also nearing its end. The past was clear as the land behind him; the future was an area of tossing uncertainty. Nothing appeared,--no track, no wake, no sail, no sun even. Only far over, beyond the curve of the horizon, was a kind of strange, unearthly glow, and on this his eye was set.
For three days his soul had ebbed and flowed like that lip of foam upon the beach, now stealing far up on the land,--for him the backward track; now turning and running far out to sea,--for him the way of adventure and advance.
But now the ultimate decision was to be made. Bessie saw it rising like a tide upon that face which once had seemed not to fit, a rapt look which snuggled in the hills and hollows and then began to harden like setting concrete. No one would call that face homely now. Interesting, most likely, would have been the word.
The gray eyes burned brighter, the lips grew tighter. The chin advanced, moved out to sea a little, as it were.
"Follow your star, John," Bessie declared stoutly, though a look of pain momentarily touched her whitening lips. "I shall despise you if you do not."
"The decision is made," John replied solemnly, "and you, Bessie, have helped to make it."
Silence fell between them. Silence, too, was in the heavens; the sun, the waves, the restless wind for the moment appeared to stand still. All nature had paused respectfully. A man, young, inexperienced, but potential, had cast the horoscope of life beyond the power of gods or men to intervene,--and with it had cast some other horoscopes as well.
