Father must have had strong in him the blood of adventure. He looked
upon our catastrophe in the light of an adventure. No anger nor
bitterness possessed him. He was too philosophic and simple to be
vindictive, and he lived too much in the world of mind to miss the
creature comforts we were giving up. So it was, when we moved to San
Francisco into four wretched rooms in the slum south of Market Street,
that he embarked upon the adventure with the joy and enthusiasm of
a child--combined with the clear sight and mental grasp of an
extraordinary intellect. He really never crystallized mentally. He had
no false sense of values. Conventional or habitual values meant nothing
to him. The only values he recognized were mathematical and scientific
facts. My father was a great man. He had the mind and the soul that only
great men have. In ways he was even greater than Ernest, than whom I
have known none greater.

Even I found some relief in our change of living. If nothing else, I
was escaping from the organized ostracism that had been our increasing
portion in the university town ever since the enmity of the nascent
Oligarchy had been incurred. And the change was to me likewise
adventure, and the greatest of all, for it was love-adventure. The
change in our fortunes had hastened my marriage, and it was as a
wife that I came to live in the four rooms on Pell Street, in the San
Francisco slum.

And this out of all remains: I made Ernest happy. I came into his stormy
life, not as a new perturbing force, but as one that made toward peace
and repose. I gave him rest. It was the guerdon of my love for him.
It was the one infallible token that I had not failed. To bring
forgetfulness, or the light of gladness, into those poor tired eyes of
his--what greater joy could have blessed me than that?