...The mariposa lily
was awake in the forests; infinitesimal yellow pansies made a soft carpet
for the feet of the deer and the puma....In the old Spanish towns of the
south, the Castilian roses were in bloom and as sweet and pink and
poignant as when Rezanov sailed through the Golden Gate in the April of
eighteen-six, or Chonita Iturbi y Moncada, the doomswoman, danced on the
hearts of men in Monterey....From end to end of the great Santa Clara
Valley the fruit trees were in bloom, a hundred thousand acres and more of
pure white blossoms or delicate pink. Bascom Luning took Alexina over it
one day in his air-car, as she called it, and from above it looked like a
scented sea that was all foam.
But no such riot and glory had come to San Francisco. This was the season
for winds that seemed to blow from the four points of the compass at
once and of ghostly fogs that stole up and down the streets of the city,
abandoning the hills to bank in the valleys, as if seeking warmth; abruptly
deserting the lowlands to prowl along the heights, always searching,
searching, these pure white lovely fogs of San Francisco, for something
lost and never found.
II
"I hope they're not too artistic to keep their rooms warm," said Aileen,
as they drove from her house where Gora and Alexina had dined, down to
the Club of the Seven Arts. "I have smoked so much, intending to prove in
public how really virtuous a society girl is, in contrast to Bohemia, that
I'm nearly frozen.
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