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.