She wrapped herself in her cloak once more, and they climbed to the crest of the hill and watched the sun rise behind the Berkeley mountains and bathe San Francisco in trembling fire. It routed what was left of the fog, although for a time the walls and waters of the Golden Gate looked darker than before, and Tamalpais was a mountain of onyx. In a few moments the smoke that wrapped the San Francisco day in a brown perpetual haze began to ascend first from the little chimneys and then from the great stacks. But until then every steeple, every tower, the great piles of stone and brick in the valley, the old gardens full of eucalyptus-trees and weeping willows, the strange assortment of architectures on Nob Hill, even the rows of houses on the tapering half-circle of hills beyond the valley, miles away, stood out as bright and sharp and shadowless as if caught and imprisoned in a crystal ball. It was the drifting smoke that seemed to bind all together and make the city fit for humanity. Gwynne pointed to a spot far to the southeast, in the valley between Market Street--the wide diagonal highway that cut the city in two, and ran from the ferries almost to the foot of Twin Peaks--and the high mound known as Rincon Hill. "There," he said, "are the hovels and shops that cover the block belonging to my mother and myself, and that is to make us rich. Half is practically sold, and the proceeds, and the money raised on the other half, will erect a building that is to cost some two hundred thousand dollars. The insurance rates will be enormous, but even so the income should be really a great one. If all goes well, the foundations--of reinforced concrete, although they still laugh at earthquakes--but Mr. Colton is a monster of caution--will be laid in about six weeks, and then I shall watch the steel framework rise with a very considerable interest." "That means the beginnings of a millionaire. Do you really care so much to be rich?" "I know the value of money," said Gwynne, dryly. "I have no intention of buying men after the fashion of your friend Tom Colton, but it is a mighty good background for personality. Now you had better go in and get some beauty sleep." XXXV