uses and "resorts." With all these Vandover
kept the pace at the Imperial, at the race-track, at the gambling tables
in the saloons and bars along Kearney and Market streets, and in the
disreputable houses amid the strong odours of musk and the rustle of
heavy silk dresses. It lasted for a year; by the end of that time he had
about forgotten his determination to go to Paris and had grown out of
touch with his three old friends, Ellis, Geary, and Haight. He seldom
saw them now; occasionally he met them in one of the little rooms of the
Imperial over their beer and Welsh rabbits, but now he always went on to
the larger rooms where one had champagne and terrapin. He felt that he
no longer was one of them.

That year the opera came to San Francisco, and Vandover hired a
messenger boy to stand in line all night at the door of the music store
where the tickets were to be sold. Vandover could still love music. In
the wreckage of all that was good that had been going on in him his love
for all art was yet intact. It was the strongest side of his nature and
it would be the last to go.

Chapter Fourteen

The house was crowded to the doors; there was no longer any standing
room and many were even sitting on the steps of the aisles. In the boxes
the gentlemen were standing up behind the chairs of large plain ladies
in showy toilets and diamonds. The atmosphere was heavy with the smell
of gas, of plush upholstery, of wilting bouquets and of sachet. A fine
vapour as of the visible exhalation of many breaths pervaded the house,
blurring the lowered lights and dimming the splendour of the great glass
chandelier.

It was warm to suffocation, a dry, irritating warmth that perspiration
did not relieve, while the air itself was stale and close as though
fouled by being breathed over and over again. In the topmost galleries,
banked with tiers of watching faces, the heat must have been unbearable.

The only movement perceptible throughout the audience was the little
swaying of gay-coloured fans like the balancing of butterflies about to
light. Occasionally there would be a vast rustling like the sound of
wind in a forest, as the holders of librettos turned the leaves
simultaneously.

The orchestra thundered; the French horns snarling, the first violins
wailing in unison, while all the bows went up and down together like
parts of a well-regulated machine; the kettle-drums rolled sonorously at
exact intervals, and now and then o