The She Boss

landscape faded. Vineyards and chicken ranches and orchards and rolling hills studded with live oaks gave place to the electric-lighted tentacles of the city. The lights blinked by at Hiram.

close at hand, in the cold salt air from the bay, in th

ied to plan, but could not. Night closed in, and all that he saw now were the blinking lights that

body change! Don't

he bow. Black as ink the Bay of San Francisco stretched before him. Like fireflies the lights of vessels scurried through the blackness.

ily and curiously at the world that waited for him. Somewhere there, perhaps, the girl of his dreams was beckoning, and begging him not to be afraid. The boat nosed into h

-the myriad lights that blinked away in perspective up Market Street, clusters of them, pillars of them, wheels of them, stars and squares of them. They all blended into a shower of diamonds and held him spellbound. Then the clang of the street cars, the clatter of hoofs on cobbles, the cru

the city. He knew enough not to stand in the street and stare. He wisely kept with a crowd while crossing, and made their expe

and it would have mattered little if he had. He walked on and on untiringly through an entrancing dream. H

ear Valley bore the face of a gargoyle compared with the soft, creamy faces he saw that night. The flashing, long-lashed eyes, the red li

being confronted by one of those white-skinned, slim-formed divinities he saw flitting from table to table. He did not know what to order nor how to order it. E

he street notified him that he would have no trouble in finding rooms; rooms by the day or week; rooms and board; rooms 15 cents and up; lodging; rooms wit

my-skinned beings that caused him so much uneasiness were employed. At last he found one where, it seemed, only smooth-faced men

ed. He was about to slink out again when a woman's voi

d in half by a screen which ran the length of the building, and that one side-the side he had seen through the window-was for men, and the other for women. The tables on the men's side were filled. The

nu card, was looking at him curiously, he felt. The blood rushed to his face; he dare

vered the card and was standing erect when he crawfished up from the floor. He was bu

new that she

edium," she was saying, "with F

. In those eyes, big and brown beneath dark, arched brows and long lashes, there was a look that thrilled him to his soul. She was more beautiful than any woman he ha

ead and butter, and a glass of water before him. He tried to look up, but

ing again, lo

ngle gentlemen on this side, but I guess you w

ir bobbing toward the kitchen. He watch

platter before him, on which steamed an enormous rib steak,

on her throughout the meal, and continued to lower them when he thought her about to look towar

looked back for her. S

business. Hiram wished a twenty-five-cent room, he said. He was taken to one, which was not a room at all, but a stall-that is, the thin board partitions did not connect with the ceiling by three feet. The bed was a single one, and the sheets had brought th

d, red-lipped girl, he fell asleep from sheer fatigue. But with unaccountable perversity his dreaming mind dwelt not upon the beautiful vision he had come to love in fi