We step inside to a foyer lit by a chandelier of incandescent lights. My bag is set down by several other travel cases and trunks filled with Martin’s and Kat’s belongings from Mrs. Lewis’s, which had been sent over that morning.

“I’ll take all of those up later,” Martin says, nodding toward the collection of possessions. “I’ll show you the house first.” He begins to show me the place, room by room. Kat trails behind us and I’m fairly sure she’s seeing this house for the first time, too.

The downstairs consists of a sitting room, dining room, kitchen, and library. In the large kitchen there are hot and cold taps at the sink, an ample icebox, and a cast-iron cooking range piped for gas. There is a butler’s table and chairs with a view of the back garden and a pantry full of odd nonperishables that the doctor did not take and a few staples that Martin arranged to be delivered earlier that day. Next to the pantry is a door to a short staircase that leads down to a low-ceilinged boiler room. The back garden has been bricked in and there are empty terra-cotta pots awaiting attention and a painted wrought-iron garden table and chairs. A long and skinny flower bed, perfect for rows of daffodils, lines the tall wooden fence at the property’s edge. Over the top of the fence, I can see the upper back sides of homes on Van Ness, the next avenue over.

In the sitting room, upholstered sofas and chairs and ottomans in shades of rose and cream are situated in front of a gas fireplace framed in carved marble. A desk, chair, and matching bookshelves with volumes already tucked inside grace the library. The dining room table and breakfront are of the same warm-hued wood, which Martin tells me is redwood stained to look like cherry. Redwood is as plentiful here in this part of California as water in the ocean. The three upstairs bedrooms are furnished with bedsteads, bureaus, and wardrobes. The water closet on the second floor has indoor plumbing, glory be, and is tiled in black, white, and red. The third floor, with its pitched ceiling, contains two rooms. One is empty and looks as if it had perhaps been used for a maid’s room. The other room was painted along one wall with the images of farm animals. It has the look of a former playroom. Each second-floor room contains a gas fireplace framed with mantels and hearths of marble or onyx, and which Martin turns on with a key before we head back downstairs.

Though it is not the most spacious home on the street, to me it is a palace. I don’t know how much a house such as this one costs. I can’t help but wonder if Martin has sunk himself in debt to acquire it and that is why I’d not been sent a train ticket for a sleeping car. It is more beautiful than anyplace I could ever have hoped to call home.