San Francisco was the city of his childhood. In happier conditions, it could hardly fail to evoke pleasant memories. The Moores lived there, and they, aided by a host of oldtime acquaintances, would gladly have made him welcome; but he avoided such snares by driving straight to the offices of the Pacific Steamship Company, where he ascertained that the mail steamer _Panama_ sailed for Valparaiso that day.
He was on board within the hour, and remained in his cabin until the engines started. Then he went on deck, and bade farewell to a land where he had worked, and dreamed, and endured, during the full years of his lost youth. Practically his last intimate glimpse of the West, save for distant views of the California coast, and a fleeting call at San Diego, was obtained when the vessel passed through the Golden Gate. Bitter-sweet recollections warred in heart and brain as he watched the beautiful and well-loved panorama. Every bold promontory and sequestered bay of the miles of narrow straits were familiar to his eyes. If there was aught of weakness in his composition, it must have made its presence felt then; but that there could be any turning back did not even occur to his vague thoughts. He might be moving swiftly into unfathomable night; his action might be deemed either stubborn or irresponsible; he might be regarded as the victim of deep delusion; but at least it must be said of him that he never flinched from the barren outlook or admitted the possibility of retreat. Hitherto love for his mother had exercised the most lasting and salutary influence on his life. The depth and intensity of that love was the gage of his horror when he discovered that he had caused her death. His emotions were incapable of logical analysis. She was dead. His forbidden passion for another woman had killed her. She might have lived seven years. For seven years he would placate her spirit "in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness."
His strength was that of the mind. He was of the order of chivalry. His renunciation would have been well understood by a few men who lived and had their being a thousand years ago. In the America of the early '90's, had his undertaking been known, which it was not, nor ever has been till this writing, the heedless majority must have wagged sapient noddles, and cried in chorus, "He is mad!"