'I too have known that sudden quickening of the pulse when something looks a bit like something else.'

'About twenty minutes after I started sitting and waiting, Victor came out of his office building and headed down Western on foot. I waited until he got to the corner, and when he turned right on Sunset I got out of the Olds and hot-footed it after him, slowing to a casual walk when I reached Sunset. I crossed to the south side of Sunset and headed west. Victor was across the street from me, maybe fifty yards ahead. He had a furtive quality to his walk, but it was probably instinctive. He didn't look around. Halfway down the next block he turned into a bar called Reno's. I let him settle in, then I sidled in myself and slid into a booth near the front. The waitress scowled at me, one guy in a booth for four.'

'The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.'

'I agreed that it was swell. We were all swell. He and I were especially swell, just a couple of swell guys sitting around lying to each other on a pleasant afternoon.'

'...I was filled, at the time, with a sense of invulnerability that came with having recently fallen in love, and I stepped forward to quell the incipient violence.
Naturally I was punched, knocked over and kicked in the face, but the broken bottles of perfume released such an incredible bouquet that I afterwards remembered the encounter with a degree of fondness.'

'may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.'

'By the time I left to go down town for supper, I was at the high point just short of where intoxication begins to droop into clumsiness or melancholy; and the minute I was outdoors the streets, in the very beautiful late of afternoon weather, improved, that if it can be improved, with the feeling of being alone for a little while, and with the sharp, tender enjoyment of a city I am ordinarily tired in.'