And so it continued, the flattering stream, while Diaz listened, touched, and full of pride.

‘Ah!’ I said.  ‘It is not I who deserve praise.’

An electric bell trembled in the theatre.

Morenita picked up her cloak.

‘Mon ami,’ she warned Villedo.  ’I must go.  Diaz, mon petit! you will persuade Mademoiselle Peel to come to the room of the Directeur later.  Madame, a few of us will meet there—­is it not so, Villedo?  We shall count on you, madame.  You have hidden yourself too long.’

I glanced at Diaz, and he nodded.  As a fact, I wished to refuse; but I could not withstand the seduction of Morenita.  She had a physical influence which was unique in my experience.

‘I accept,’ I said.

‘A tout a l’heure, then,’ she twittered gaily; and they left as they had come, Villedo affectionately toying with Morenita’s hand.

Diaz remained behind a moment.

‘I am so glad you didn’t decline,’ he said.  ’You see, here in this theatre Morenita is a queen.  I wager she has never before in all her life put herself out of the way as she has done for you to-night.’

‘Really!’ I faltered.

And, indeed, as I pondered over it, the politeness of these people appeared to be marvellous, and so perfectly accomplished.  Villedo, who has made a European reputation and rejuvenated his theatre in a dozen years, is doubtless, as he said, a professional maker of compliments.  In his position a man must be.  But, nevertheless, last night’s triumph is officially and very genuinely Villedo’s.  While as for Morenita and Diaz, the mere idea of these golden stars waiting on me, the librettist, effacing themselves, rendering themselves subordinate at such a moment, was fantastic.  It passed the credible....  A Diaz standing silent and deferential, while an idolized prima donna stepped down from her throne to flatter me in her own temple!  All that I had previously achieved of renown seemed provincial, insular.

But Diaz took his own right place in the spacious salon of Villedo afterwards, after all the applause had ceased, and the success had been consecrated, and the enraptured audience had gone, and the lights were extinguished in the silent auditorium.  It is a room that seems to be furnished with nothing but a grand piano and a large, flat writing-table and a few chairs.  On the walls are numberless signed portraits of singers and composers, and antique playbills of the Opera Comique, together with strange sinister souvenirs of the great fires which have destroyed the house and its patrons in the past.  When Diaz led me in, only Villedo and the principal artists and Pouvillon, the conductor, were present.  Pouvillon, astonishingly fat, was sitting on the table, idly swinging the electric pendant over his head; while Morenita occupied Villedo’s armchair, and Villedo talked to Montferiot and another man in a corner.  But a crowd of officials of the theatre ventured on Diaz’