hand.

Then I went out and to a ticket office in Piccadilly, and got a
through ticket to 'Frisco.

CHAPTER IX

IN 'FRISCO

During the voyage to New York and the subsequent journey across
America to San Francisco I was very wretched.

The mystery of Viola's disappearance and her flight from me stood
before my mind perpetually, worrying and harassing it. I felt no
joyful anticipation of reaching 'Frisco and meeting Suzee, though I
recognised in a dull way that some sort of distraction and
companionship would be the best thing to stop this incessant pondering
on the same subject. I slept little at night, and in the short
intervals of rest such vivid dreams of Viola would come to me, that
awakening in the morning brought a fresh anguish of despair and
disappointment with it each day.

This sort of thing could not go on, I must let her "lie asleep in my
subconsciousness for a year," as she put it in her letter--for to
forget her was impossible--or my reason would go down under the
strain.

When I arrived in San Francisco, it was one of those strange days when
the sea-fog comes in to visit the town. It rolled in great thick
billows down the streets from the sand dunes, obscuring everything,
damping everything, filling the air with the salt scent of the open
sea.

I went to one of the big hotels, and they gave me a bedroom and
sitting-room to myself: the rooms were adjoining and comfortable, but
oh! what a blankness fell upon me as I sat down in one of the chairs
and the bell-boy, having deposited a jug of iced water on the table,
shut the door. I had been so much with Viola that it seemed strange to
me now, hard to realise that I was alone. How many rooms such as
these, she and I had come into, shared together, and how bright and
gay her companionship had always been, how she had always laughed at
the discomforts or the difficulties of our travels! Surely we had been
made for each other! What strange wave of life was this that had
broken us apart? I looked towards my bedroom, dull and cheerless and
empty. From the open window the warm, wet, yellow fog was streaming in
its soft wreaths through both rooms. The roar from the stone-paved
streets, crowded with incessant traffic, came up to me muffled through
the fog.

After a time I rose, closed the windows, unpacked my things, and
changed my clothes. Then I went down at six to dine, as I wanted a
long evening. Some champagne cheered me, and as I sat in the l