e than ever the passionate city of love that
she is, recognising candidly, with the fearless intellectuality of the
Latin temperament, that one thing only makes life worth living. How soft
was the air! How languorous the pose of the dim figures that passed us
half hidden in other carriages! And in my heart was the lofty joy of work
done, definitely accomplished, and a vista of years of future pleasure.
My happiness was ardent and yet calm--a happiness beyond my hopes, beyond
what a mortal has the right to dream of. Nothing could impair it, not
even Diaz' continued silence as to a marriage between us, not even the
imminent brief separation that I was to endure.

'My child,' said Diaz suddenly, 'I'm very hungry. I've never been
so hungry.'

'You surely didn't forget to have your dinner?' I exclaimed.

'Yes, I did,' he admitted like a child; 'I've just remembered.'

'Diaz!' I pouted, and for some strange reason my bliss was intensified,
'you are really terrible! What can I do with you? You will eat before
you leave me. I must see to that. We can get something for you at the
hotel, perhaps.'

'Suppose we go to a supper restaurant?' he said.

Without waiting for my reply, he seized the dangling end of the
speaking-tube and spoke to the driver, and we swerved round and regained
the boulevard.

And in the private room of a great, glittering restaurant, one of a long
row of private rooms off a corridor, I ate strawberries and cream and
sipped champagne while Diaz went through the entire menu of a supper.

'Your eyes look sad,' he murmured, with a cigar between his teeth. 'What
is it? We shall see each other again in a fortnight.'

He was to resume his career by a series of concerts in the United States.
A New York agent, with the characteristic enterprise of New York agents,
had tracked Diaz even into the forest and offered him two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars for forty concerts on the condition that he played
at no concert before he played in New York. And in order to reach New
York in time for the first concert, it was imperative that he should
catch the _Touraine_ at Havre. I was to follow in a few days by a
Hamburg-American liner. Diaz had judged it more politic that we should
not travel together. In this he was undoubtedly right.

I smiled proudly.

'I am both sad and happy,' I answered.

He moved his chair until it touched mine, and put his arm round my neck,
and brought my face close to his.

'Look