“How well they acted their love-scene!” continued the lover.

And, as he uttered that suggestive phrase, he bent fondly toward a little face surrounded by a white woollen hood, from which the hair escaped in rebellious curls.

Sidonie sighed: 

“Oh! yes, the love-scene.  The actress wore beautiful diamonds.”

There was a moment’s silence.  Poor Frantz had much difficulty in explaining himself.  The words he sought would not come, and then, too, he was afraid.  He fixed the time mentally when he would speak: 

“When we have passed the Porte Saint-Denis—­when we have left the boulevard.”

But when the time arrived, Sidonie began to talk of such indifferent matters that his declaration froze on his lips, or else it was stopped by a passing carriage, which enabled their elders to overtake them.

At last, in the Marais, he suddenly took courage: 

“Listen to me, Sidonie—­I love you!”

That night the Delobelles had sat up very late.

It was the habit of those brave-hearted women to make their working-day as long as possible, to prolong it so far into the night that their lamp was among the last to be extinguished on the quiet Rue de Braque.  They always sat up until the great man returned home, and kept a dainty little supper warm for him in the ashes on the hearth.

In the days when he was an actor there was some reason for that custom; actors, being obliged to dine early and very sparingly, have a terrible gnawing at their vitals when they leave the theatre, and usually eat when they go home.  Delobelle had not acted for a long time; but having, as he said, no right to abandon the stage, he kept his mania alive by clinging to a number of the strolling player’s habits, and the supper on returning home was one of them, as was his habit of delaying his return until the last footlight in the boulevard theatres was extinguished.  To retire without supping, at the hour when all other artists supped, would have been to abdicate, to abandon the struggle, and he would not abandon it, sacre bleu!

On the evening in question the actor had not yet come in and the women were waiting for him, talking as they worked, and with great animation, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour.  During the whole evening they had done nothing but talk of Frantz, of his success, of the future that lay before him.

“Now,” said Mamma Delobelle, “the only thing he needs is to find a good little wife.”

That was Desiree’s opinion, too.  That was all that was lacking now to Frantz’s happiness, a good little wife, active and brave and accustomed to work, who would forget everything for him.  And if Desiree spoke with great confidence, it was because she was intimately acquainted with the woman who was so well adapted to Frantz Risler’s needs.  She was only a year younger than he, just enough to make her younger than her husband and a mother to him at the same time.