She relapsed into an uncomfortable silence, and presently the attendant from the restaurant car came along the corridor and looked in to ask if they were going to have dinner on the train.  Both nodded an affirmative.

“Table for two?” he queried, evidently taking them to be two friends travelling together.

Diana was about to enlighten him when her vis-a-vis leaned forward hastily.

“Please,” he said persuasively, and as she returned no answer he apparently took her silence for consent, for something passed unobtrusively from his hand to that of the attendant, and the latter touched his hat with a smiling—­“Right you are, sir!  I’ll reserve a table for two.”

Diana felt that the acquaintance was progressing rather faster than she could have wished, but she hardly knew how to check it.  Finally she mustered up courage to say firmly:—­

“It must only be if I pay for my own dinner.”

“But, of course,” he answered courteously, with the slightest tinge of surprise in his tones, and once again Diana, felt that she had made a fool of herself and blushed to the tips of her ears.

A faint smile trembled for an instant on his lips, and then, without apparently noticing her confusion, he began to talk, passing easily from one subject to another until she had regained her confidence, finally leading her almost imperceptibly into telling him about herself.

In the middle of dinner she paused, aghast at her own loquacity.

“But what a horrible egotist you must think me!” she exclaimed.  “I’ve been talking about my own affairs all the time.”

“Not at all.  I’m interested.  This Signor Baroni who is training your voice—­he is the finest teacher in the world.  You must have a very beautiful voice for him to have accepted you as a pupil.”  There was a hint of surprise in his tones.

“Oh, no,” she hastened to assure him modestly.  “I expect it was more that I had the luck to catch him in a good mood that afternoon.”

“And his moods vary considerably, don’t they?” he said, smiling as though at some personal recollection.

“Oh, do you know him?” asked Diana eagerly.

In an instant his face became a blank mask; it was as though a shutter had descended, blotting out all its vivacious interest.

“I have met him,” he responded briefly.  Then, turning the subject adroitly, he went on:  “So now you are on your way home for a well-earned holiday?  Your people must be looking forward to seeing you after so long a time—­you have been away a year, didn’t you say?”

“Yes, I spent the other two vacations abroad, in Italy, for the sake of acquiring the language.  Signor Baroni”—­laughingly—­“was horror-stricken at my Italian, so he insisted.  But I have no people—­not really, you know,” she continued.  “I live with my guardian and his daughter.  Both my parents died when I was quite young.”