"So strange that even we who have lived here always are constantly running into the most astonishing things.
"Perhaps," the big girl added, after a brief silence, "that is why America is such a glorious place to live."
"But did you not endeavor to make a call at this strange home?" asked Jeanne.
"I did. Little good it did me! I knocked three times at the door. There was no answer. It was growing dark, but no light shone from those porthole windows. So all I could do was to retrace my steps.
"I had gone not a dozen paces when I caught the sound of a half suppressed laugh. I wheeled about, but saw no one. Now, what do you make of that?"
"It's a sweet and jolly mystery," said Jeanne. "We shall solve it, you and I."
And in dreaming of this new and apparently harmless adventure, the little French girl's troubles were, for the time being at least, forgotten. She slept soundly that night and all her dreams were dreams of peace.
And on that new day, like a ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds after a storm, there came to Jeanne an hour of speechless joy.
Having exercised as ever her gift of friendship to all mankind, she was able, through her acquaintance with the watchman, to enter the opera house when she chose. There was only one drawback to this; she must enter always as Pierre and never as Petite Jeanne.
Knowing that some sort of rehearsal would be in progress, she garbed herself in her Pierre costume and repaired to the place which to her, of all places on earth, seemed the home of pure enchantment--the opera.
Even now, when the seats were clothed like ghosts in white sheets, when the aisles, so often adorned with living models all a-glitter with silks and jewels, and echoing with the sound of applause and laughter, were dark and still, the great hall lost none of its charm.
As she tripped noiselessly down the foyer where pillars cut from some curious stone flanked her on every side and priceless chandeliers hung like blind ghosts far above her head, she thought of the hundreds who had promenaded here displaying rich furs, costly silks and jewels. She recalled, too, the remark of that strangely studious man with a beard:
"I wonder what he meant?" she said half aloud. "Perhaps some day I shall meet him again. If I do, I shall ask him."