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desks. “I suppose you’re accustomed to being around men all day, but I must admit, it still takes getting used to.” She lowered her voice a notch. “I’d better be quiet. The thundering hordes’ll be here any minute.”
    Amelia glanced over Lacy’s shoulder at Julia, hunched over her desk in the inner office. “How long have you worked here?”
    “Since the day the firm opened,” Lacy said proudly. “Julia was terribly long-suffering in the beginning while I was taking my typing course, but here we all are. Isn’t it grand?” she enthused. Then her face fell. “How thoughtless of me. I can only imagine how hard everything’s been for you since you came home.”
    “It’s been quite a saga, but thank you, Lacy. Your sympathy means a lot.”
    “Oh yes,” Lacy said with an earnest expression clouding her eyes, and Amelia sensed an odd shyness had crept into her voice. “Julia and I both felt ever so sad for your circumstances.”
    Amelia felt awkward in the face of Lacy’s sober compassion. There was something else in her tone that she couldn’t quite identify. She swiftly glanced toward the inner office. “Is it all right if I go in to speak to Julia?”
    Lacy bent forward as if imparting a secret. “I suppose so, but I’m warning you, she isn’t in the best of humors this morning. She prepared the monthly billing yesterday. Lately, that exercise puts her terribly out of sorts, so approach at your peril.”
    Amelia hung her cloak on a peg where Lacy directed and knocked softly on the office’s glass door. Julia frowned, looked up, and, when she recognized her visitor, beckoned her inside.
    Amelia hesitated, surprised by a sudden sense of playing the petitioning acolyte to Julia’s master status—a reminder of their unequal relationship that had originated during college days. It had been a long time since she’d felt she must kneel at someone else’s feet, but the tiny, intense woman was, at times, a force of nature and certainly deserved Amelia’s respect.
    “Julia, if this isn’t a good time, I can come back later.”
    “Nonsense. Come in, come in. Finally I can officially bid you welcome home and congratulate you on earning your certificate.”
    “Well, we did speak briefly on the telephone, but thank you. I would have come to see you long before this, but—”
    “I completely understand. No need to apologize. Edith Pratt filled me in a bit.”
    Of course Julia would have talked at some point to Nurse Pratt, Charlie Hunter’s private caretaker who’d also been their classmate at Berkeley.
    The Old Girls Society, for certain , Amelia reminded herself wryly. After all, how many young women of their set eschewed marriage for continuing academic or business pursuits?
    Very few , Amelia silently answered her own question.
    Julia pointed to a chair opposite her desk. “Please sit down. And I’m so deeply sorry about your grandfather. Everyone is. I was distressed, also, to learn the results of the hearing. Did John Damler not—”
    “John Damler did an excellent job,” Amelia hastened to assure her. “Thank you so much for recommending him. The problem was that awful Judge Haggerty—who is obviously one of Schmitz’s crooked cronies—and the controversy that still swirls around the control of a woman’s separate property.”
    “I thought that issue had been resolved,” Julia said, frowning. “At least the suffragists claim it has.”
    “Apparently it depends on what judge sits on the bench interpreting the new laws. At the moment, I don’t have the funds to take it to a higher court and can’t chance I’d get another Judge Haggerty deciding the matter.”
    “I only wish you’d both had more success.”
    A minuscule figure of less than five feet, Julia Morgan stood up from her drafting board. This mild April morning, the architect was dressed in a mannish, olive-green double-breasted jacket, matching skirt, and a silk blouse of exquisite softness complimented by a silk tie