Kwang Lee smiled and reached for the blue earthenware bottle.

Collis and Hannah left J Street in August, and rented a large white house a little further out of town, on I Street. Hannah began to furnish it and decorate it in a style which she considered suitable for the treasurer of the Sierra Pacific Railroad and his spouse, with plush sofas and heavy armchairs and marquetry tables. She preferred soft colours, like dove greys and pale blues, and the inside of the house, at certain times of the day, had the quality of a smoky dream, a cloudiness about it.

They lived together peaceably, and gently, although they were both quite aware that the time would have to come when their real mettle was tested, and their personal strengths would have to clash. But that would come with the railroad, when the three storekeepers of Sacramento were ready to turn the whole world inside out.

In early September, Theodore travelled to Washington again, in another dogged attempt to raise funds for his detailed survey of the Sierras. He wrote back to his partners that ‘the prospect of starting the railroad seems further away than ever, for although many agreed it is a good idea, they are not prepared to back their enthusiasm with money.’

Leland, who had been toying with the idea for more than a year, had made up his mind at last to run for the governorship of California. He hadn’t really wanted to run until the next elections, but Jane was becoming irritable about the amount of money and credit they had already tied up in the railroad, and it seemed to her that if Leland was in the governor’s mansion, his influence over state’s expenditure on railroads would at least protect the money they had risked so far.

Collis, smiling, said it smacked of corruption. Leland said testily that it smacked of nothing but good sound sense.

During the year, tension between Southerners and Northerners became increasingly open. One evening, there was a fierce argument in the drawing-room of the Willard Mannings, up on Rincon Hill, between Willard Manning himself, a Virginian, and a young man from Illinois called Sturgeon. A knife was drawn, and Sturgeon was stabbed in the face and chest. For the next two weeks, San Francisco society fumed and bubbled with suppressed fear.

Hannah was sitting in their light, spacious front parlour, embroidering a firescreen, when Collis returned home from the store the Tuesday after the Sturgeon stabbing. He came across and kissed her, and then went to the pearwood cabinet for a drink.

‘Did you hear the news from South Park?’ asked Hannah.

‘About the Willard Mannings? Yes. Kwang Lee told me.’

‘What do you think about it?’

Collis turned. ‘What do I think about it? I don’t think anything about it. The North and the South are steaming themselves up into a condition of civil war, and incidents like this are all part of it.’