Into stillness by a breaking
Curse. Behold, they stir and quicken,
Gods shall tremble at their waking....
Lo, my warriors, close akin,
An impregnable alliance.
Drop thy sword and thy defiance,
Bow thy head and let them in.
To emerge from this mild life was like falling into the sea from a safe deck. Edward found himself suddenly in his dark viewless room at the hotel. He could not find anyone who could tell him where Emily was. He could hardly walk. The ground seemed strangely near when he walked. He managed to go to Rhoda’s studio. It was empty. The janitor could only say with some pride, “Mrs. Bird has gotten herself jailed....”
Nothing seemed left to Edward but San Francisco itself. Nothing was left that he could grasp; his personal hold on the happy city had disappeared. He felt as if he held a cold hard diamond in his hand. A diamond on the palm of the hand has no value, no value until another hand touches it or eyes desire it, or until it is set in a crown.
All his days Edward sat alone with an aching head either in his room or in the lobby of the hotel. In the lobby he sat in the midst of overdressed painted women waiting for their beaux. They were all hostile to him and to one another. In revenge he dwelt on the fact that their hair, waved and padded under light nets, looked like wigs and that, though they looked angrily at one another, they all tried to look alike. Sometimes one of them would have an “adventure”; a strange stray beau would find a pretext to get into conversation and they would talk impertinently and with heavy facetiousness for a time.