The scene was laid in a restaurant. (Not that that mattered; a sewing-circle would have served equally well.) The glittering little company were already gathered upon the stage for the _finale_. They were headed by the leading lady—young, blonde, lovely; a shimmering vision in silver—prepared to burst into song. The orchestra gave her a preliminary chord; she opened her carmine lips. And then, to her entered from the wings, apparently without cue or authorization, the principal comedian, in the rôle of the head waiter of the restaurant—preposterous weeping whiskers and all. He walked to the footlights, turned to the audience, and announced, quite simply:— “_L’Armistice est signée!_” The thing came with such consummate unexpectedness—the thing they had been expecting all evening—that for a moment no one stirred. Then, with a rush, the audience were on their feet; so were the orchestra. One long-drawn, triumphant electrifying chord sprang—apparently of its own volition—from their instruments, and a tremor ran through the theatre. The girl in silver stepped forward, and broke into the _Marseillaise_, with tears raining down her face.… “Name of a name of a name!” An old French colonel, standing beside Boone, was muttering brokenly to himself. Boone could see his fingernails whiten as he grasped the back of the seat in front of him. Boone contented himself with Frances’s hand, and together they gazed up at the singer. There she stood—slender, radiant, beautiful, with not too much on, shedding abundant, genuine tears over an artificial complexion. She _was_ Paris—Paris personified—Paris unclothed and in her right mind—Paris come to her own again. The curtain fell—rose—fell—rose—while the storm of cheers raged. About the tenth time it rose again, to stay. The girl had both her hands pressed to her face, and her body was shaking. But another chord from the orchestra—the same chord—steadied her. She dropped her hands by her sides, uplifted her limpid voice, and sang the _Marseillaise_ once more. But this time her _entourage_ had increased. Upon the outskirts of the stage—sidling in from the wings, peeping round the proscenium, mingling bodily with the glittering, shimmering company—there appeared another throng. Scene-shifters; dressers; lusty firemen; brown-faced _poilus_; gendarmes; mysterious individuals in decayed dress-suits; little boys and girls, indicative of the fact that even _revue_ artists contract domestic ties—they all edged on, and sang the _Marseillaise_ too. If the girl in the centre was Paris, this shining, grimy, patient, cheerful, wistful, triumphant throng around her was France. France—with the black shadow of forty years rolled away from her horizon! France—the much-enduring, the all-surviving, the indomitable; with her beloved capital inviolate still, and her lost provinces coming back to her! _Gallia Victrix._ No wonder they sang. _La Guerre est gagnée_—at last!