Presently they reached in a quiet street a small, pretty house with a charming little garden. Jean was surprised; he expected to find something much grander, and plainly said so.
“No indeed,” answered Diane, dismissing the coachman and showing Jean the way through the drawing-room by glass doors down the steps into the pretty garden. “I think I am of a saving turn. I know what very few singers do, and that is, one day my voice will be gone, so I am saving my money now, that I may be able to live here always, and have you to tea with me in the summer afternoons. I always knew I would see you, Jean, and tell you this.”
Jean scowled fiercely at Diane. She was making fun of him and his honest and modest love, but he did not think she ought to say such things to any man. So he declined to notice Diane’s speech. When they took their seats on the iron chairs in the garden before the little tea-table, Diane continued her confidences:
“When the foolish men would send me diamonds, I would coolly exchange them for paste and pocket the difference. No indeed, I have heard of music-hall artists with a great many diamonds who were sold out by their creditors.”
Jean looked at Diane with admiration.
“I didn’t think you had so much sense, Diane,” he said.
Then the maid brought the tea, and they sat in the sunny garden until the purple dusk came and a new moon smiled at them from a sky half ruby and half sapphire.
They talked much of the coming war. Jean, who was a capital shot, was to join the franc-tierurs.
“I could not keep on singing, you know, when I could be potting the Prussians.”
“As for me,” replied Diane, “I shall keep on singing as a patriotic duty. These Parisians look upon their theatres and operas and music-halls as a barometer. As long as these are open and we sing and dance and play for this great tyrant, Paris, so long will she believe that all is going well, but let us once stop, and she will become panic-stricken. However, I expect to sing before our Emperor in Berlin next season.”