“In the darkness of my room I sit alone. I am hungry; I am thirsty; I have no fire to warm me. Let the stars be my meat; Let the moon be my goblet of wine; Let the burning dark sky be my fire.” Rhoda read it as though it were a good poem. She had a golden, careful voice. When she had finished she said, “I seem to have heard that some place before.” Emily added, “I think a person called Smith must have written it.” Most people were afraid that their immediate neighbors might have written it. So only one other guest risked a comment, a man with a white excited face who said, “It has no sense and nothing whatever to commend it. Speed up.” His face was burning white with impatience; he was a fanatic of speed. Edward, looking at him, pitied himself because friends were so hard. But really Edward was fortunate. About the table there were those whose presence in the position of friends Edward had not deserved or earned. No-one could think of San Francisco as it was in Edward’s time without remembering certain faces.... Those faces were part of the essential blessing of San Francisco. The face of an old man in a radiance of long white hair and long white beard, the face of a connoisseur of gentleness, a face that never smiled without good cause, but in which no cause was good enough to kindle irritation. The square keen face of the only woman in the world who can be witty even when she cries. The face of a tyrant of benevolence; the only one of his many gifts that you must always acknowledge is his mood—if you fail to catch his mood, you offend—and perish in an avalanche of coals of fire. Another face, sharp and changing, with the complexion of a child under careless grey hair. The face of an eager pessimist whose imagination peopled the worst of worlds with the best of men. He distrusted no man, only all mankind. Faces of friends from whom poor Edward was too poor to claim friendship. Rhoda read in a changed voice, with obvious serene enjoyment: “Curse the rain. Oh hell. Oh hell. The rain is zippety-zipping against the window. Blurch—Blurch—the big drops. Ikkle-ikkle-ikkle the little drops. Ashes blown out of a hell of water. Like weasels the lightnings Wriggle down a flat sky After the squealing hunted wind And the snarling thunder. Blurch zippety ikkle ikkle ikkle. The rain against the window Oh hell. I would rather wear a crown of golden thorns and find a pearl in every oyster on a golden Dish Than Be a wet rag in a hell of water.” “That,” said Avery Bird quickly, anxious to make his voice heard in the first silence, “is as full of meat as a unicorn’s belly in springtime. That’s real stuff.” Other people murmured, “Too wet.” “Not sanitary.” The white-faced apostle shouted, “Oh, get on, get on. The next one can’t be worse.”