GILDED!" He wrung his hands. "'Somewhere people are happy.
Somewhere little children are at play--'"

"Oh, hush!" she interrupted. "I know it's bad; but we've always
had it so, and I won't have it abused. Let's go into the dining-
room, anyway. We'll sit in there after this. We've always been
stiff and constrained in here."

They went out into the dining-room, and drew up a couple of arm-
chairs into the bay window, and sat there looking out. Blix had
not yet lighted the gas--it was hardly dark enough for that; and
for upward of ten minutes they sat and watched the evening
dropping into night.

Below them the hill fell away so abruptly that the roofs of the
nearest houses were almost at their feet; and beyond these the
city tumbled raggedly down to meet the bay in a confused, vague
mass of roofs, cornices, cupolas, and chimneys, blurred and
indistinct in the twilight, but here and there pierced by a new-
lighted street lamp. Then came the bay. To the east they could
see Goat Island, and the fleet of sailing-ships anchored off the
water-front; while directly in their line of vision the island of
Alcatraz, with its triple crown of forts, started from the surface
of the water. Beyond was the Contra Costa shore, a vast streak of
purple against the sky. The eye followed its sky-line westward
till it climbed, climbed, climbed up a long slope that suddenly
leaped heavenward with the crest of Tamalpais, purple and still,
looking always to the sunset like a great watching sphinx. Then,
further on, the slope seemed to break like the breaking of an
advancing billow, and go tumbling, crumbling downward to meet the