iminate epithets.

* * * * *

Later, in the refuge of his own four walls and under the brooding solace
of an after-dinner cigar, he lost some of the intensiveness of his
former humor. But the force of the vehemence which had shaken him filled
him with much wonder and some apprehension. He was too much a man of
experience to deny questions when they were put to him squarely by
circumstances.

"You're not her brother ... you're surely not her husband. And I didn't
know it was the fashion for a...."

Lily Condor's clipped question struck him squarely now. Just what were
his expectations concerning Claire Robson? The thought turned him cold.
Essentially he was of Puritan mold, but he had always had a theory that
love of illicit pleasures must have been uncommonly strong in a people
who found it necessary to fight the flesh so uncompromisingly. Battling
with the elements upon the bleak shores of New England contributed, no
doubt, to the gray and chastened spirits that these grim folks had won
for themselves; spirits that colored and sometimes seeded swiftly under
the softer skies of California. San Francisco was full of these forced
blooms consumed and withered by the sudden heat of a free and
traditionless life. He knew scores of old-timers--his father's
friends--who had been gloriously wrecked by the passion with which they
met freedom's kiss. They had pursued pleasure with an energy overtrained
in wrestling with the devil and had paid the penalty of all ardent souls
lacking the prudence of weakness. There was at once something fine and
unlawful about the spirit of adventure: it implied courage, impatience
of restraint, wilfulness--in short, all the virtues and vices of
strength. He had felt at times the heritage of this strength, shorn of
its power by the softness of a wilderness that had been wooed instead
of conquered. His forefathers had found California a waiting, gracious
bride, but there had been almost a suggestion of the courtezan in the
lavishness of this land's response to the caresses of the invaders.

There was something fantastic in the memory of his father, fresh from
the austere dawns of the little fishing village of Gloucester,
transplanted suddenly to the wine-red sunsets of the Golden Gate. He
felt that his father must have had the courage for substance-wasting
without the temptation. Most men in those early days had plunged unyoked
into the race--Ezra Stillman brought