two o'clock
Women of Greek perfection in body and feature , free-stepping Western women who met the gaze of men directly and fearlessly , their costumes ran through all the exaggerations of Parisian mode and tint . Toilettes whose brilliancy would cause heads to turn and necks to crane on the streets of an Eastern city , drew here no tribute of comment . It had gone on all the afternoon . From the Columbia Theatre corner , which formed one boundary of `` the line , '' to the Sutler Street corner of Kearney , five blocks away , certain of these peacocks had been strutting back and forth since two o'clock . The men who corresponded in the social organization to these paraders of vanity lined the sidewalks or lolled in the open-air cigar stands , as did these two young adventurers in life -- Bertram Chester , now a year and a half out of college , and Mark Heath , cub reporter on the _ Herald _ . When the homefarers from office and factory had begun to tarnish the brilliance of this show , when the women had begun to scatter -- this one to dinner with her man , that one back to the hall-room supper by whose economies she saved for her Saturday afternoon vanities -- Bertram and Mark drifted with the current up Kearney street toward the Hotel Marseillaise . In their blood , a little whipped already by the two cocktails which they had felt able to afford even while they debated over the price of dinner , ran all the sparkling currents of youth .