nnounced, quite simply, one of the most
successful airs from _La Valliere_, and then he began to decorate it with
an amazing lacework of variations, and finished with a bravura display
such as no pianist could have surpassed. The performance, marvellous in
itself, was precisely suited to that audience, and it electrified the
audience; it electrified even me. Diaz fought his way through kisses and
embraces to Villedo, who stood on his toes and wept and put his arms
round Diaz' neck.

'_Cher maitre_,' he cried, 'you overwhelm us!'

'You are too kind, all of you,' said Diaz. 'I must ask permission to
retire. I have to conduct Mademoiselle Peel to her hotel, and there is
much for me to do during the night. You know I start very early
to-morrow.'

'_Helas!_ Morenita sighed.

I had blushed. Decidedly I behaved like a girl last night. But, indeed,
the new, swift realization, as Diaz singled me out of that multitude,
that after all he utterly belonged to me, that he was mine alone, was
more than I could bear with equanimity. I was the proudest woman in the
universe. I scorned the lot of all other women.

The adieux were exchanged, and there were more kisses. '_Au revoir! Bon
voyage_! Much success over there.'

The majority of these good, generous souls were in tears.

Villedo opened a side-door, and we escaped into a corridor, only Morenita
and one or two others accompanying us to the street.

And on the pavement a carpet had been laid. The electric brougham was
waiting. I gathered up my skirt and sprang in. Diaz followed, smiling at
me. He put his head out of the window and said a few words. Morenita blew
a kiss. Villedo bowed profoundly. The carriage moved in the direction of
the boulevard.... I had carried him off. Oh, the exquisite dark intimacy
of the interior of that smooth-rolling brougham! When, after the theatre,
a woman precedes a man into a carriage, does she not publish and glory
in the fact that she is his? Is it not the most delicious of avowals?
There is something in the enforced bend of one's head as one steps in.
And when the man shuts the door with a masculine snap--

I wondered idly what Morenita and Villedo thought of our relations. They
must surely guess.

We went down the boulevard and by the Rue Royale into the Place de la
Concorde, where vehicles flitted mysteriously in a maze of lights under
the vast dome of mysterious blue. And Paris, in her incomparable toilette
of a June night, seemed mor