She sang it with a chaste reserve so full of sprightly suggestiveness that the public warmed amain.

The husband and Steiner, sitting side by side, were laughing complaisantly, and the whole house broke out in a roar when Prulliere, that great favorite, appeared as a general, a masquerade Mars, decked with an enormous plume and dragging along a sword, the hilt of which reached to his shoulder.

As for him, he had had enough of Diana; she had been a great deal too coy with him, he averred.

Thereupon Diana promised to keep a sharp eye on him and to be revenged.

The duet ended with a comic yodel which Prulliere delivered very amusingly with the yell of an angry tomcat.