He hoped that he would die before the party. As a solver of problems it is a fact that death has been over-rated. Edward miserably survived. He had spent three dollars out of his last few score on a room in a hotel in one of the eastern bay cities. He had missed the last Ferry home the night before. He took an unreasonably early Ferry back to San Francisco. California mornings are very happy even if you are not in love. They fill you with happiness even if you have been drinking too much the night before. Tamalpais, San Francisco’s mountain, bore the sun full in her face. Her shoulders were wrapped in a rising cloud, her mantle was rose-gold and green and, in the folds of her mantle, she boasted a steel embroidery of redwoods. The mists about the eastern hills were loosed and were blowing towards the sea. The climbing suburb of Berkeley stood clear, flushed with gardens. A glaze of golden poppies lay on the slopes behind Berkeley. The scrub-oaks grew, close as shadows, in the little canyons. There was the rare gold-green of willows against cloud-colored masses of eucalyptus. Californians have brought suburb-making almost to an art. Their cities and their country-side are equally suburban. No-one has a country house in California; no-one has a city house. It is good to see trees always from city windows, but it is not so good always to see houses from country windows. This, however, for better or worse, seems to be California’s ideal, and she will not rest till she has finished the task of turning herself into one long and lovely Lower Tooting. Edward stepped from the Ferry into the shrill bell-like clamor of newspaper boys. He was always outrun on arriving in San Francisco by the hard-shouldered and agile business men who efficiently caught trams on the instant of disembarking from the Ferry. Edward ran among the women and the aged and he thought, “Half of me is very nearly happy this morning. Whatever the party’s like, Emily must be made to come to it. The half of me that thinks of seeing her is happy. The half that thinks of her seeing me is miserable. People are probably looking at me and saying, ‘There goes a man in love.’” All the women’s stores on Geary Street were showing clothes that would have looked exquisite on Emily. Edward left the tame urban street-car and mounted one of the wild open pulley-cars that soar up precipices to the crags where artists and Italian delicatessen merchants build their nests. Miss Romero, in a kimono perhaps expressive of her soul, was preparing breakfast at an electric stove in the studio. Mr. Bird, in another kimono which showed a battle of sparrows on his spine, was washing last night’s glasses at the sink. Their cat lay on its side pressing its shoulder blades against the sleeping Victrola. It was a parasite of a cat; it prided itself on being a member of an ancient civilisation. It never moved except to move away. It had never seen a mouse fired in anger.