IT WAS nearly ten o'clock when Jack Faraday ascended the steps of Madame Delmonti's bow-windowed mansion and pressed the electric bell. He was a little out of breath and nervous, for, being young and a stranger to San Francisco, and almost a stranger to Madame Delmonti, he did not exactly know at what hour his hostess's _conversazione_ might begin, and had upon him the young man's violent dread of being conspicuously early or conspicuously late. It did not seem that he was either. As he stood in the doorway and surveyed the field, he felt, with a little rising breath of relief, that no one appeared to take especial notice of him. Madame Delmonti's rooms were lit with a great blaze of gas, which, thrown back from many long mirrors and the gold mountings of a quantity of furniture and picture frames, made an effect of dazzling yellow brightness, as brilliantly glittering as the transformation scene of a pantomime. In the middle of the glare Madame Delmonti's company had disposed themselves in a circle, which had some difficulty in accommodating itself to the long narrow shape of the drawing-room. Now and then an obstinate sofa or extra large plush-covered arm-chair broke the harmonious curve of the circle, and its occupant looked furtively ill at ease, as if she felt the embarrassment of her position in not conforming to the general harmony of the curving line. The eyes of the circle were fixed on a figure at the piano, near the end of the room--a tall dark Jewess in a brown dress and wide hat, who was singing with that peculiar vibrant richness of tone that is so often heard in the voices of the Californian Jewesses. She was perfectly self-possessed, and her velvet eyes, as her impassioned voice rose a little, rested on Jack Faraday with a cheerful but not very lively interest. Then they swept past him to where on a sofa, quite out of the circle, two women sat listening. One was a young girl, large, well-dressed, and exceedingly handsome; the other a peaked lady, passee and thin, with her hair bleached to a canary yellow. The Jewess, still singing, smiled at them, and the girl gave back a lazy smile in return. Then as the song came to a deep and mellow close, Madame Delmonti, with a delicate rustling of silk brushing against silk, swept across the room and greeted her guest. Madame Delmonti was an American, very rich, a good deal made up, but still pretty, and extremely well preserved. Signor Delmonti, an Italian baritone, whom she had married, and supported ever since, was useful about the house, as he now proved by standing at a little table and ladling punch into small glasses, which were distributed among the guests by the two little Delmonti girls in green silk frocks. Madame Delmonti, with her rouged cheeks and merry grey eyes, as full of sparkle as they had been twenty years ago, was very cordial to her guest, asking him, as they stood in the doorway, whom he would best like to meet.