“Excuse me, monsieur, but we have no rooms.”

“Why do you tell me that?”

“Pardon.  I thought monsieur wanted a room.  Mademoiselle Rosa, the great diva, is staying here, and all the English from the Hotel du Panier d’Or have left there in order to be in the same hotel with Mademoiselle Rosa.”

Somewhere behind that mask of professional servility there was a smile.

“I do not want a room,” I said, “but I want to see Mademoiselle Rosa.”

“Ah!  As to that, monsieur, I will inquire.”  He became stony at once.

“Stay.  Take my card.”

He accepted it, but with an air which implied that everyone left a card.

In a moment another servant came forth, breathing apologies, and led me to Rosa’s private sitting-room.  As I went in a youngish, dark-eyed, black-aproned woman, who, I had no doubt, was Rosa’s maid, left the room.

Rosa and I shook hands in silence, and with a little diffidence.  Wrapped in a soft, black, thin-textured tea-gown, she reclined in an easy-chair.  Her beautiful face was a dead white; her eyes were dilated, and under them were dark semicircles.

“You have been ill,” I exclaimed, “and I was not told.”

She shrugged her shoulders in denial, and shivered.

“No,” she said shortly.  There was a pause.  “He is buried?”

“Yes.”

“Let me hear about it.”

I wished to question her further about her health, but her tone was almost imperious, and I had a curious fear of offending her.  Nevertheless I reminded myself that I was a doctor, and my concern for her urged me to be persistent.

“But surely you have been ill?” I said.

She tapped her foot.  It was the first symptom of nervous impatience that I had observed in her.

“Not in body,” she replied curtly.  “Tell me all about the funeral.”

And I gave her an account of the impressive incidents of the interment—­the stately procession, the grandiose ritual, the symbols of public grief.  She displayed a strange, morbid curiosity as to it all.

And then suddenly she rose up from her chair, and I rose also, and she demanded, as it were pushed by some secret force to the limit of her endurance: 

“You loved him, didn’t you, Mr. Foster?”

It was not an English phrase; no Englishwoman would have used it.

“I was tremendously fond of him,” I answered.  “I should never have thought that I could have grown so fond of any one in such a short time.  He wasn’t merely fine as an artist; he was so fine as a man.”

She nodded.

“You understood him?  You knew all about him?  He talked to you openly, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” I said.  “He used to tell me all kinds of things.”

“Then explain to me,” she cried out, and I saw that tears brimmed in her eyes, “why did he die when I came?”

“It was a coincidence,” I said lamely.