He pulled the curtains apart and shading his eyes from the light of the room looked down towards the city. It had vanished under a sea of white fog that broke against the ledge of Nob Hill. A cable-car might have been a comet flashing along the edge of a void.
"I wonder," he said, "I wonder—should San Francisco disappear—be burned by that fire you are always expecting—or if the bay should shoal, or the Golden Gate rush together, so that she would have no reason for existence, and gradually be devoured by time—I suppose the fog and the winds would still be faithful. I can imagine the fogs rolling in and embracing her, and the winds raging about every forgotten corner, centuries after there was anybody left to curse either."
"Was it Mrs. Kaye or Lady Cecilia Spence that said you just missed being a poet? I hope some slumbering ancestor is not struggling for resurrection out here. I much prefer that you should be a statesman."
"I intend to be, nor have I any desire to turn poet. I have seen too many in London. But this city, ugly as it is, appeals in its own way to the imagination—more, for some unknown reason, than the most poetic I ever saw in the old worlds. There is something almost uncanny about it. While it is raw, and crude, and practically in its infancy, it at the same time suggests an unthinkable antiquity. Perhaps—who knows?—it had a civilization contemporary with the Montezumas—or with Atlantis; and it is the ghosts of old unrecorded peoples that linger and give one a fairly haunted feeling when one climbs these hills alone at night."
"Much better you keep your hand on your pistol and your eye out for foot-pads—and one dreamer in the family is enough. I hope I have not infected you."
She forsook her glowing image and looked at him inquisitively. He wandered about the room again and paused to look at a row of daguerreotypes on a shelf, dead and forgotten Belmonts.
"You do dream a good deal," he said. "Judging by your varying styles of beauty as well as other things, you must be possessed by a dozen different sorts of old Johnnies trying to mutter something up out of the dark."
"I'm going to be nothing but a dreamer for a whole week."
"If that means that you will forget chickens, and dress yourself decently, I shall do what I can to heighten the illusion. Should you like me to make love to you?" he asked, turning to her with a quickening interest.
"That might wake me up," said Isabel, politely. "This week is crowded with parties and things. I am to visit Mrs. Hofer and go to all of them. You won't see much of me until New Year's eve, when I come home and we dine at a Bohemian restaurant with Lyster and Paula, and watch the street crowds after. But I do not look so far ahead. If I am a success to-night I am going to make believe that I am an old-time belle like Helena Belmont, or my poor little mother, for that matter. And I shall feel just like her when I start, for Angélique will pin up my skirts under a long cloak, and pull carriage boots over my slippers so that nothing will be spoiled going down those steps. I suppose I can't hope to be quite such a belle as if I had lived in those less-sophisticated days, but who knows? And I can forget Rosewater—and Bohemia; I sha'n't even think of the Stones until New Year's eve; I sent them their Christmas presents this morning, on purpose. I am going to be frivolous, coquette, and imagine myself a girl of the old Southern Set, when there were no new people. And I'm going to make them think I am a great beauty, whether I am or not. I remember mamma used to say to me: 'Cultivate the beauty air. That often is more effective than beauty itself. Tiny Montgomery was a beauty according to every known standard, but she had no dash, and was never looked at when Helena Belmont was in the room.' So to-night, you'll see me sail into that ballroom as if I already had the town at my feet. By-the-way—the last time I began to feel like a real girl again was that night at Arcot—and I did feel eighteen—triumphant—happy—until I got back and saw Lord Zeal in the library. I have never forgotten his face."