Explore "Diverging Roads" by Rose Wilder Lane on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Cooped in a narrow space at the end of a long corridor, Helen sat gazing at the life of a great San Francisco hotel. Every moment the color and glitter shifted under the brilliant light of mammoth chandeliers. Tall, gilded elevator-doors opened and closed; women passed, wrapped in satins and velvets, airy feathers in their shining hair; men in evening dress escorted them; bellboys went by, carrying silver trays and calling unintelligibly, their voices rising above the continuous muffled stir and the faint sounds of music from the Blue Room.
Helen had choked the telegraph-sounder with a pencil, so that she might hear the music. But the tones of the violins came to her blurred by a low hum of voices, by the rustle of silks, by the soft movement of many feet on velvet carpets. Nothing was clear, simple, or distinct in the medley. Her ears were baffled, as her eyes were dazzled and her thoughts confused, by a multiplicity of sensations. San Francisco was a whirlpool, an endless roaring circle, stupendous and dizzying.