d seen L'Abbaye--to find Frances
Morley there; but just as certainly I was disappointed.

I called for my bill, paid it, and stood up. I gave one look about the
crowded, noisy place, and then I started violently and sat down again. I
had seen Herbert Bayliss. He had, apparently, just entered and a waiter
was finding a seat for him at a table some distance away and on the
opposite side of the great room.

There was no doubt about it; it was he. My heart gave a bound that
almost choked me and all sorts of possibilities surged through my brain.
He had come to Paris to find her, he had found her--in our conversation
he had intimated as much. And now, he was here at the "Abbey." Why? Was
it here that he had found her? Was she singing here after all?

Bayliss glanced in my direction and I sank lower in my chair. I did
not wish him to see me. Fortunately the lady opposite waved her paper
parasol just then and I went into eclipse, so far as he was concerned.
When the eclipse was over he was looking elsewhere.

The black-bearded Frenchman, who seemed to be, if not one of the
proprietors, at least one of the managers of L'Abbaye, appeared in the
clear space at the center of the room between the tables and waved
his hands. He was either much excited or wished to seem so. He shouted
something in French which I could not understand. There was a buzz of
interest all about me; then the place grew still--or stiller. Something
was going to happen, that was evident. I leaned toward my voluble
neighbor, the French gentleman who had called for "de cheer Americain."

"What is it?" I asked. "What is the matter?"

He ignored, or did not hear, my question. The bearded person was still
waving his hands. The orchestra burst into a sort of triumphal march and
then into the open space between the tables came--Frances Morley.

She was dressed in a simple evening gown, she was not painted or
powdered to the extent that women who had sung before her had been, her
hair was simply dressed. She looked thinner than she had when I last saw
her, but otherwise she was unchanged. In that place, amid the lights and
the riot of color, the silks and satins and jewels, the flushed faces of
the crowd, she stood and bowed, a white rose in a bed of tiger lilies,
and the crowd rose and shouted at her.

The orchestra broke off its triumphal march and the leader stood up, his
violin at his shoulder. He played a bar or two and she began to sing.

She sang a si