"
CHAPTER II
I
She was quite breathless as she reached the eucalyptus grove and paused for
a moment before slipping into the house and climbing the stairs.
The city lying in the valleys and on the hills arrested her attention, for
it was a long while since she had been awake and out of doors at five in
the morning.
It looked like the ghost of a city in that pallid dawn. The houses seemed
to have huddled together as if in fear before they sank into sleep, to
crouch close to the earth as if warding off a blow. Only the ugly dome of
the City Hall, the church steeples, and the old shot tower held up
their heads, and they had an almost terrifying sharpness of outline, of
alertness, as if ready to spring.
In that far-off district known as "South of Market Street," which she had
never entered save in a closed carriage on her way to the Southern Pacific
Station or to pay a yearly call on some old family that still dwelt on
that oasis, Rincon Hill--sole outpost of the social life of the
sixties--infrequent thin lines of smoke rose from humble chimneys. It
was the region of factories and dwellings of the working-class, but its
inhabitants were not early risers in these days of high wages and short
hours.
Even those gray spirals ascended as if the atmosphere lay heavy on them.
They accentuated the lifelessness, the petrifaction, the intense and
sinister quiet of the prostrate city.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25