looked as if marsh lights would play over its horrid surface presently, and
then come crashing down as the pillars of the earth gave way.



II


Alexina was a child of California and knew what was coming. She barely had
time to brace herself when she saw the sleeping city jar as if struck by a
sudden squall, and with the invisible storm came a loud menacing roar of
imprisoned forces making a concerted rush for freedom.

She threw her arms about one of the trees, but it was bending and groaning
with an accent of fear, a tribute it would have scorned to offer the mighty
winds of the Pacific. Alexina sprang clear of it and unable to keep her
feet sat down on the bouncing earth.

Then she remembered that it was a rigid convention among real Californians
to treat an earthquake as a joke, and began to laugh. There was nothing
hysterical in this perfunctory tribute to the lesser tradition and it
immediately restored her courage. Moreover, the curiosity she felt for all
phases of life, psychical and physical, and her naive delight in everything
that savored of experience, caused her to stare down upon the city now
tossing and heaving like the sea in a hurricane, with an almost impersonal
interest.

The houses seemed to clutch at their precarious foundations even while they
danced to the tune of various and appalling noises. Above the ascending
roar of the earthquake Alexina heard the crashing of steeples, the dome