one would be ashamed to receive a visitor, no matter how stylish, in
such a room.

She put her roses in a vase and then fetched a bottle of milk from the
window sill and a box of crackers from the bureau drawer. Setting these
on the marble-topped table beside the droplight she sat and ate. It was
too cold to take off her coat and from its pocket she drew the card that
had come with the flowers. As she sipped and munched, the shadows of the
room hovering on the light's circular edge, she read over the words,
murmuring them low, her voice lingering on them caressingly.

It was the first knock at the door of her dreams, the first prismatic ray
of romance that had penetrated the penumbra of brutal realities in which
she had lived.




CHAPTER VII

THE PICAROON


The Argonaut Hotel--all San Franciscans will remember it--had, like the
Vallejo, started life with high expectations and then declined. But not
to so complete a downfall. Fashion had left it, but it still did a good
business, was patronized by commercial travelers and old customers from
the interior, and had a solid foundation of residentials, married couples
beaten by the servant question and elderly men with no ties. Its position
had been against it--on that end of Montgomery Street where the land