and dignified against the soft sunset sky. At the right were the Park,
with a home-going tide pouring through it at this hour, and Kearney
Street with its jangling car bells, and below, the square roofs of the
warehouse district, and the spire of the ferry building, and the bay
framed in its rim of hills. Montiverte owned the house in which he
conducted his business; it was one of the oldest in the city, built by
the French pioneers who were the first to erect permanent homes in the
new land. This had been the fashionable part of town in 1860, but its
stately old homes were put to strange uses in these days.
Boarding-houses of the lowest class, shops, laundries, saloons, and such
restaurants as Jules Montiverte's overran the district; the Chinese
quarter pressed hard upon one side, and what was always called the "bad"
part of town upon the other. Yet only two blocks away, straight up the
hill, were some of San Francisco's most beautiful homes, the brownstone
mansion, then the only one in California, that some homesick Easterner
built at fabulous cost, the great house that had been recently given for
an institute of art, and the homes of two or three of the railroad
kings.

Patrons of Montiverte began to saunter in by twos and threes. Some of
these the girls knew, and saluted familiarly; others were strangers, and
ignored, and made to feel as uncomfortable as possible. Julia's beauty
was always the object of notice, and she loved to appear entirely
unconscious of it, to sparkle and chatter as if no eyes were upon her.
Emeline came in, with one or two older women, and Julia looked up from a
great bowl of soup to nod to her.

"Sign up?" asked Emeline languidly. And two or three strangers,
obviously impressed by the term, waited for the answer.