l
desire to--and there was no temptation. I am afraid it was an incident
without a moral. Yet it had one touch characteristic of the period which
I like to remember. The man who had spoken to me, I think, suddenly
realized, at the moment of my disastrous coup, the fact of my extreme
youth. He moved toward the banker, and leaning over him whispered a few
words. The banker looked up, half impatiently, half kindly--his hand
straying tentatively toward the pile of coin. I instinctively knew what
he meant, and, summoning my determination, met his eyes with all the
indifference I could assume, and walked away.

I had at that period a small room at the top of a house owned by a
distant relation--a second or third cousin, I think. He was a man of
independent and original character, had a Ulyssean experience of men and
cities, and an old English name of which he was proud. While in London
he had procured from the Heralds' College his family arms, whose
crest was stamped upon a quantity of plate he had brought with him to
California. The plate, together with an exceptionally good cook, which
he had also brought, and his own epicurean tastes, he utilized in the
usual practical Californian fashion by starting a rather expensive
half-club, half-restaurant in the lower part of the building--which he
ruled somewhat autocratically, as became his crest. The restaurant was
too expensive for me to patronize, but I saw many of its frequenters as
well as those who had rooms at the club. They were men of very
distinct personality; a few celebrated, and nearly all notorious. They
represented a Bohemianism--if such it could be called--less innocent
than my later experiences. I remember, however, one handsome young
fellow whom I used to meet occasionally on the staircase, who captured
my youthful fancy. I met him only at midday, as he did not rise till
late, and this fact, with a certain scrupulous elegance and neatness in
his dress, ought to have made me suspect that he was a gambler. In my
inexperience it only invested him with a certain romantic mystery.

One morning as I was going out to my very early breakfast at a cheap
Italian cafe on Long Wharf, I was surprised to find him also descending
the staircase. He was scrupulously dressed even at that early hour,
but I was struck by the fact that he was all in black, and his slight
figure, buttoned to the throat in a tightly fitting frock coat, gave, I
fancied, a singular melancholy to his pal