As he said this, Edward saw the inner side of a long cylinder wave as it broke on a clear stretch of sand. It was the color of bright jade. The nearest wave was jade-green, and the wave behind it was a dull gold, and the wave behind that was a thick violet, and behind that ran waves of endless shades of blue. And behind all the waves stood the rust-red and amethyst hills. “Worth while to be alive?” thought Edward. “What am I saying? I who can see so clearly.... Eyes in the world must always be happy, whatever hearts may be....” His mind considered itself for a moment almost complacently. “In a way I must be rather an interesting feller. Lots of fellers get no kick at all out of impersonal things like colors and what not. I really get a certain kick out of being so unhappy. It is like being drunk, it makes one see more faerily....” He looked at Rhoda again. She was smoking, leaning against a rock and drawing with a stick on the sand. Rhoda’s strong short hair never blew out of order. The tip of her nose was never shiny. Nothing undignified ever dared to happen to Rhoda. He donned again his extravagantly appealing look. “Rhoda, if you could let me have an hour of my own. I have never had an hour of my own. Think of all the hours you have possessed—and spare me one. Let me take command to-night, let everybody see me in command ... let Emily see me....” “Me—me ...” he thought. “What kind of a Me would Emily want to see?... There isn’t any cute little notion that would delight Emily.... She would be terribly stabbing and cold to a cute little notion....” “Yet I will ride that hour,” he told himself in the street-car. “It must be my hour....” These were poor Edward’s accomplishments. He could do two card tricks, but anyone smart could see through them. He could sing in an unresonant voice a few of the old sea-chanteys with which Jimmy used to inspire delighted applause. He could make paper crabs. That was rather a cute notion. But not cute enough to be the life and soul of a party. The crabs would do as a side-line. This thought enlivened his wits a little. He could write poetry. It was unhappy, offended poetry, but not always very bad. He himself recited it at night to himself and thought it good, but he was sure that nobody else in the world would understand it. Edward had no capacity for being comfortable. He lived in a small room in a cheap hotel in San Francisco, and in that room there was no trace of Edward except Edward himself. The room was allowed to remain an undisguised hotel room. A defaced card of advertisements and hotel regulations was on the door, a green pottery spittoon on the floor, a gaudy but not clean cotton padded quilt on the bed. Even the dirty jokes which some predecessor had written on the wall were left, and on the dressing-table was the Gideon Society’s Bible, the flyleaf of which gave lists of texts to look up when business was bad or after making a successful deal.