The cabin was very spacious, yet not more so than was proper, considering that the rent of it came to about sixpence a minute. There was room, even after all the packages were stowed, for both of them to lie down. But instead of lying down they eagerly inspected the little abode. They found a lavatory basin with hot and cold water taps, but no hot water and no cold water, no soap and no towels. And they found a crystal water-bottle, but it was empty. Then a steward came and asked them if they wanted anything, and because they were miserable poltroons they smiled and said "No." They were secretly convinced that all the other private cabins, inhabited by titled persons and by financiers, were superior to their cabin, and that the captain of the steamer had fobbed them off with an imitation of a real cabin.

Then it was that Miss Ingate, who since Charing Cross had been a little excited by a glimpsed newspaper contents-bill indicating suffragette riots that morning, perceived, through the open door of the cabin, a most beautiful and most elegant girl, attired impeccably in that ritualistic garb of travel which the truly cosmopolitan wear on combined rail-and-ocean journeys and on no other occasions. It was at once apparent that the celestial creature had put on that special hat, that special veil, that special cloak, and those special gloves because she was deeply aware of what was correct, and that she would not put them on again until destiny took her again across the sea, and that if destiny never did take her again across the sea never again would she show herself in the vestments, whose correctness was only equalled by their expensiveness.

The young woman, however, took no thought of her impressive clothes. She was existing upon quite another plane. Miss Ingate, preoccupied by the wrongs and perils of her sex, and momentarily softened out of her sardonic irony, suspected that they might be in the presence of a victim of oppression or neglect. The victim lay Half-prone upon the hard wooden seat against the ship's rail. Her dark eyes opened piteously at times, and her exquisite profile, surmounted by the priceless hat all askew, made a silhouette now against the sea and now against the distant white cliffs of Albion, according to the fearful heaving of the ship. Spray occasionally dashed over her. She heeded it not. A few feet farther off she would have been sheltered by a weather-awning, but, clinging fiercely to the rail, she would not move.

Then a sharp squall of rain broke, but she entirely ignored the rain.

The next moment Miss Ingate and Audrey, rushing forth, had gently seized her and drawn her into their cabin. They might have succoured other martyrs to the modern passion for moving about, for there were many; but they chose this particular martyr because she was so wondrously dressed, and also perhaps a little because she was so young. As she lay on the cabin sofa she looked still younger; she looked a child. Yet when Miss Ingate removed her gloves in order to rub those chill, fragile, and miraculously manicured hands, a wedding ring was revealed. The wedding ring rendered her intensely romantic in the eyes of Audrey and Miss Ingate, who both thought, in private:

"She must be the wife of one of those lords!"

Every detail of her raiment, as she was put at her ease, showed her to be clothed in precisely the manner which Audrey and Miss Ingate thought peeresses always were clothed. Hence, being English, they mingled respect with their solacing pity. Nevertheless, their respect was tempered by a peculiar pride, for both of them, in taking lemonade on the Pullman, had taken therewith a certain preventive or remedy which made them loftily indifferent to the heaving of ships and the eccentricities of the sea. The specific had done all that was claimed for it—which was a great deal—so much so that they felt themselves superwomen among a cargo of flaccid and feeble sub-females. And they grew charmingly conceited.

"Am I in my cabin?" murmured the martyr, about a quarter of an hour after Miss Ingate, having obtained soda water, had administered to her a dose of the miraculous specific.

Her delicious cheeks were now a delicate crimson. But they had been of a delicate crimson throughout.

"No," said Audrey. "You're in ours. Which is yours?"

"It's on the other side of the ship, then. I came out for a little air. But I couldn't get back. I'd just as lief have died as shift from that seat out there by the railings."

Something in the accent, something in those fine English words "lief" and "shift," destroyed in the minds of Audrey and Miss Ingate the agreeable notion that they had a peeress on their hands.

"Is your husband on board?" asked Audrey.

"He just is," was the answer. "He's in our cabin."

"Shall I fetch him?" Miss Ingate suggested. The corners of her lips had begun to fall once more.

"Will you?" said the young woman. "It's Lord Southminster. I'm Lady Southminster."

The two saviours were thrilled. Each felt that she had misinterpreted the accent, and that probably peeresses did habitually use such words as "lief" and "shift." The corners of Miss Ingate's lips rose to their proper position.

"I'll look for the number on the cabin list," said she hastily, and went forth with trembling to summon the peer.

As Audrey, alone in the cabin with Lady Southminster, bent curiously over the prostrate form, Lady Southminster exclaimed with an air of childlike admiration:

"You're real ladies, you are!"

And Audrey felt old and experienced. She decided that Lady Southminster could not be more than seventeen, and it seemed to be about half a century since Audrey was seventeen.

"He can't come," announced Miss Ingate breathlessly, returning to the cabin, and supporting herself against the door as the solid teak sank under her feet. "Oh yes! He's there all right. It was Number 12. I've seen him. I told him, but I don't think he heard me—to understand, that is. If you ask me, he couldn't come if forty wives sent for him."

"Oh, couldn't he!" observed Lady Southminster, sitting up. "Couldn't he!"

When the boat was within ten minutes of France, the remedy had had such an effect upon her that she could walk about. Accompanied by Audrey she managed to work her way round the cabin-deck to No. 12. It was empty, save for hand-luggage! The two girls searched, as well as they could, the whole crowded ship for Lord Southminster, and found him not. Lady Southminster neither fainted nor wept. She merely said:

"Oh! All right! If that's it....!"

Hand-luggage was being collected. But Lady Southminster would not collect hers, nor allow it to be collected. She agreed with Miss Ingate and Audrey that her husband must ultimately reappear either on the quay or in the train. While they were all standing huddled together in the throng waiting for the gangway to put ashore, she said in a low casual tone, ^ propos of nothing:

"I only married him the day before yesterday. I don't know whether you know, but I used to make cigarettes in Constantinopoulos's window in Piccadilly. I don't see why I should be ashamed of it, d'you?"

"Certainly not," said Miss Ingate. "But it is rather romantic, isn't it, Audrey?"

Despite the terrific interest of the adventure of the cigarette girl, disappointment began immediately after landing. This France, of which Audrey had heard so much and dreamed so much, was a very ramshackle and untidy and one-horse affair. The custom-house was rather like a battlefield without any rules of warfare; the scene in the refreshment-room was rather like a sack after a battle; the station was a desert with odd files of people here and there; the platforms were ridiculous, and you wanted a pair of steps to get up into the train. Whatever romance there might be in France had been brought by Audrey in her secret heart and by Lady Southminster.

Audrey had come to France, and she was going to Paris, solely because of a vision which had been created in her by the letters and by the photographs of Madame Piriac. Although Madame Piriac and she had absolutely no tie of blood, Madame Piriac being the daughter by a first husband of the French widow who became the first Mrs. Moze—and speedily died, Audrey persisted privately in regarding Madame Piriac as a kind of elder sister. She felt a very considerable esteem for Madame Piriac, upon whom she had never set eyes, and Madame Piriac had certainly given her the impression that France was to England what paradise is to purgatory. Further, Audrey had fallen in love with Madame Piriac's portraits, whose elegance was superb. And yet, too, Audrey was jealous of Madame Piriac, and especially so since the attainment of freedom and wealth. Madame Piriac had most warmly invited her, after the death of Mrs. Moze, to pay a long visit to Paris as a guest in her home. Audrey had declined—from jealousy. She would not go to Madame Piriac's as a raw girl, overdone with money, who could only speak one language and who knew nothing at all of this our planet. She would go, if she went, as a young woman of the world who could hold her own in any drawing-room, be it Madame Piriac's or another. Hence Miss Ingate had obtained the address of a Paris boarding-house, and one or two preliminary introductions from political friends in London.

Well, France was not equal to its reputation; and Miss Ingate's sardonic smile seemed to be saying: "So this is your France!"

However, the excitement of escorting the youngest English peeress to Paris sufficed for Audrey, even if it did not suffice for Miss Ingate with her middle-aged apprehensions. They knew that Lady Southminster was the youngest English peeress because she had told them so. At the very moment when they were dispatching a telegram for her to an address in London, she had popped out the remark: "Do you know I'm the youngest peeress in England?" And truth shone in her candid and simple smile. They had not found the peer, neither on the ship, nor on the quay, nor in the station. And the peeress would not wait. She was indeed obviously frightened at the idea of remaining in Calais alone, even till the next express. She said that her husband's "man" would meet the train in Paris. She ate plenteously with Audrey and Miss Ingate in the refreshment-room, and she would not leave them nor allow them to leave her. The easiest course was to let her have her way, and she had it.

By dint of Miss Ingate's unscrupulous tricks with small baggage they contrived to keep a whole compartment to themselves. As soon as the train started the peeress began to cry. Then, wiping her heavenly silly eyes, and upbraiding herself, she related to her protectresses the glory of a new manicure set. Unfortunately she could not show them the set, as it had been left in the cabin. She was actually in possession of nothing portable except her clothes, some English magazines bought at Calais, and a handbag which contained much money and many bonbons.

"He's done it on purpose," she said to Audrey as soon as Miss Ingate went off to take tea in the tea-car. "I'm sure he's done it on purpose. He's hidden himself, and he'll turn up when he thinks he's beaten me. D'you know why I wouldn't bring that luggage away out of the cabin? Because we had a quarrel about it, at the station, and he said things to me. In fact we weren't speaking. And we weren't speaking last night either. The radiator of his—our—car leaked, and we had to come home from the Coliseum in a motor-bus. He couldn't get a taxi. It wasn't his fault, but a friend of mine told me the day before I was married that a lady always ought to be angry when her husband can't get a taxi after the theatre—she says it does 'em good. So first I told him he mustn't leave me to look for one. Then I said I'd wait where I was, and then I said we'd walk on, and then I said we must take a motor-bus. It was that that finished him. He said: 'Did I expect him to invent a taxi when there wasn't one?' And he swore. So of course I sulked. You must, you know. And my shoes were too thin and I felt chilly. But only a fortnight before I was making cigarettes in the window of Constantinopoulos's. Funny, isn't it? Otherwise he's behaved splendid. Still, what I do say is a man's no right to be ill when he's taking you to Paris on your honeymoon. I knew he was going to be ill when I left him in the cabin, but he stuck me out he wasn't. A man that's so bad he can't come to his wife when she's bad isn't a man—that's what I say. Don't you think so? You know all about that sort of thing, I lay."

Audrey said briefly that she did think so, glad that the peeress's intense and excusable interest in herself kept her from being curious about others.

"Marriage ain't all chocolate-creams," said the peeress after a pause. "Have one?" And she opened her bag very hospitably.

Then she turned to her magazines. And no sooner had she glanced at the cover of the second one than she gave a squeal, and, fetching deep breaths, passed the periodical to Audrey. At the top of the cover was printed in large letters the title of a story by a famous author of short tales. It ran:

"MAN OVERBOARD."

Henceforward a suspicion that had lain concealed in the undergrowth of the hearts of the two girls stalked boldly about in full daylight.

"He's done it, and he's done it to spite me!" murmured Lady Southminster tearfully.

"Oh no!" Audrey protested. "Even if he had fallen overboard he'd have been seen and the captain would have stopped the boat."

"Where do you come from?" Lady Southminster retorted with disdain. "That's an omen, that is"—pointing to the words on the cover of the magazine. "What else could it be? I ask you."

When Miss Ingate returned the child was fast asleep. Miss Ingate was paler than usual. Having convinced herself that the sleeper did genuinely sleep, she breathed to Audrey:

"He's in the next compartment! ... He must have hidden himself till nearly the last minute on the boat and then got into the train while we were sending off that telegram."

Audrey blenched.

"Shall you wake her?"

"Wake her, and have a scene—with us here? No, I shan't. He's a fool."

"How d'you know?" asked Audrey.

"Well, he must have been a fool to marry her."

"Well," whispered Audrey. "If I'd been a man I'd have married that face like a shot."

"It might be all right if he'd only married the face. But he's married what she calls her mind."

"Is he young?"

"Yes. And as good-looking in his own way as she is."

"Well—"

But the Countess of Southminster stirred, and the slight movement stopped conversation.

The journey was endless, but it was no longer than the sleep of the Countess. At length dusk and mist began to gather in the hollows of the land; stations succeeded one another more frequently. The reflections of the electric lights in the compartment could be seen beyond the glass of the windows. The train still ruthlessly clattered and shook and swayed and thundered; and weary lords, ladies and financiers had read all the illustrated magazines and six-penny novels in existence, and they lolled exhausted and bored amid the debris of literature and light refreshments. Then the speed of the convoy slackened, and Audrey, looking forth, saw a pale cathedral dome resting aloft amid dark clouds. It was a magical glimpse, and it was the first glimpse of Paris. "Oh!" cried Audrey, far more like a girl than a widow. The train rattled through defiles of high twinkling houses, roared under bridges, screeched, threaded forests of cold blue lamps, and at last came to rest under a black echoing vault.

Paris!

And, mysteriously, all Audrey's illusions concerning France had been born again. She was convinced that Paris could not fail to be paradisiacal.

Lady Southminster awoke.

Almost simultaneously a young man very well dressed passed along the corridor. Lady Southminster, with an awful start, seized her bag and sprang after him, but was impeded by other passengers. She caught him only after he had descended to the platform, which was at the bottom of a precipice below the windows. He had just been saluted by, and given orders to, a waiting valet. She caught him sharply by the arm. He shook free and walked quickly away up the platform, guided by a wise instinct for avoiding a scene in front of fellow-travellers. She followed close after him, talking with rapidity. They receded. Audrey and Miss Ingate leaned out of the windows to watch, and still farther and farther out. Just as the honeymooning pair disappeared altogether their two forms came into contact, and Audrey's eyes could see the arm of Lord Southminster take the arm of Lady Southminster. They vanished from view like one flesh. And Audrey and Miss Ingate, deserted, forgotten utterly, unthanked, buffeted by passengers and by the valet who had climbed up into the carriage to take away the impedimenta of his master, gazed at each other and then burst out laughing.

"So that's marriage!" said Audrey.

"No," said Miss Ingate. "That's love. I've seen a deal of love in my time, ever since my sister Arabella's first engagement, but I never saw any that wasn't vehy, vehy queer."

"I do hope they'll be happy," said Audrey.

"Do you?" said Miss Ingate.



CHAPTER VIII

EXPLOITATION OF WIDOWHOOD

The carriage had emptied, and the two adventurers stood alone among empty compartments. The platform was also empty. Not a porter in sight. One after the other, the young widow and the elderly spinster, their purses bulging with money, got their packages by great efforts down on to the platform.

An employee strolled past.

"Porteur?" murmured Audrey timidly.

The man sniggered, shrugged his shoulders, and vanished.

Audrey felt that she had gone back to her school days. She was helpless, and Miss Ingate was the same. She wished ardently that she was in Moze again. She could not imagine how she had been such a fool as to undertake this absurd expedition which could only end in ridicule and disaster. She was ready to cry. Then another employee appeared, hesitated, and picked up a bag, scowling and inimical. Gradually the man, very tousled and dirty, clustered all the bags and parcels around his person, and walked off. Audrey and Miss Ingate meekly following. The great roof of the station resounded to whistles and the escape of steam and the clashing of wagons.

Beyond the platforms there were droves of people, of whom nearly every individual was preoccupied and hurried. And what people! Audrey had in her heart expected a sort of glittering white terminus full of dandiacal men and elegant Parisiennes who had stepped straight out of fashion-plates, and who had no cares—for was not this Paris? Whereas, in fact, the multitude was the dingiest she had ever seen. Not a gleam of elegance! No hint of dazzling colour! No smiling and satiric beauty! They were just persons.

At last, after formalities, Audrey and Miss Ingate reached the foul and chilly custom-house appointed for the examination of luggage. Unrecognisable peers and other highnesses stood waiting at long counters, forming bays, on which was nothing at all. Then, far behind, a truck hugely piled with trunks rolled in through a back door and men pitched the trunks like toys here and there on the counters, and officials came into view, and knots of travellers gathered round trunks, and locks were turned and lids were lifted, and the flash of linen showed in spots on the drabness of the scene. Miss Ingate observed with horror the complete undoing of a lady's large trunk, and the exposure to the world's harsh gaze of the most intimate possessions of that lady. Soon the counters were like a fair. But no trunk belonging to Audrey or to Miss Ingate was visible. They knew then, what they had both privately suspected ever since Charing Cross, that their trunks would be lost on the journey.

"Oh! My trunk!" cried Miss Ingate.

Beneath a pile of other trunks on an incoming truck she had espied her property. Audrey saw it, too. The vision was magical. The trunk seemed like a piece of home, a bit of Moze and of England. It drew affection from them as though it had been an animal. They sped towards it, forgetting their small baggage. Their porteur leaped over the counter from behind and made signs for a key. All Audrey's trunks in turn joined Miss Ingate's; none was missing. And finally an official, small and fierce, responded to the invocations of the porteur and established himself at the counter in front of them. He put his hand on Miss Ingate's trunk.

"Op-en," he said in English.

Miss Ingate opened her purse, and indicated to the official by signs that she had no key for the trunk, and she also cried loudly, so that he should comprehend:

"No key! ... Lost!"

Then she looked awkwardly at Audrey.

"I've been told they only want to open one trunk when there's a lot. Let him choose another one," she murmured archly.

But the official merely walked away, to deal with the trunks of somebody else close by.

Audrey was cross.

"Miss Ingate," she said formally, "you had the key when we started, because you showed it to me. You can't possibly have lost it."

"No," answered Winnie calmly and knowingly. "I haven't lost it. But I'm not going to have the things in my trunk thrown about for all these foreigners to see. It's simply disgraceful. They ought to have women officials and private rooms at these places. And they would have, if women had the vote. Let him open one of your trunks. All your things are new."

The porteur had meanwhile been discharging French into Audrey's other ear.

"Of course you must open it, Winnie," said she. "Don't be so absurd!" There was a persuasive lightness in her voice, but there was also command. For a moment she was the perfect widow.

"I'd rather not."

"The porteur says we shall be here all night," Audrey persisted.

"Do you know French?"

"I learnt French at school, Winnie," said the perfect widow. "I can't understand every word, but I can make out the drift." And Audrey went on translating the porter according to her own wisdom. "He says there have been dreadful scenes here before, when people have refused to open their trunks, and the police have had to be called in. He says the man won't upset the things in your trunk at all."

Miss Ingate gazed into the distance, and privately smiled. Audrey had never guessed that in Miss Ingate were such depths of obstinate stupidity. She felt quite distinctly that her understanding of human nature was increasing.

"Oh! Look!" said Miss Ingate casually. "I'm sure those must be real Parisians!" Her offhandedness, her inability to realise the situation, were exasperating to the young widow. Audrey glanced where Miss Ingate had pointed, and saw in the doorway of the custom-house two women and a lad, all cloaked but all obviously in radiant fancy dress, laughing together.

"Don't they look French!" said Miss Ingate.

Audrey tapped her foot on the asphalt floor, while people whose luggage had been examined bumped strenuously against her in the effort to depart. She was extremely pessimistic; she knew she could do nothing with Miss Ingate; and the thought of the vast, flaring, rumbling city beyond the station intimidated her. The porteur, who had gone away to collect their neglected small baggage, now returned, and nudged her, pointing to the official who had resumed his place behind the trunks. He was certainly a fierce man, but he was a little man, and there was an agreeable peculiarity in his eye.

Audrey, suddenly inspired and emboldened, faced him; she shrugged her shoulders Gallically at Miss Ingate's trunk, and gave a sad, sweet, wistful smile, and then put her hand with an exquisite inviting gesture on the smallest of her own trunks. The act was a deliberate exploitation of widowhood. The official fiercely shrugged his shoulders and threw up his arms, and told the porteur to open the small trunk.

"I told you they would," said Miss Ingate negligently.

Audrey would have turned upon her and slain her had she not been busy with the tremendous realisation of the fact that by a glance and a gesture she had conquered the customs official—a foreigner and a stranger. She wanted to be alone and to think.

Just as the trunk was being relocked, Audrey heard an American girlish voice behind her:

"Now, you must be Miss Ingate!"

"I am," Miss Ingate almost ecstatically admitted.

The trio in cloaked fancy dress were surrounding Miss Ingate like a bodyguard.



CHAPTER IX

LIFE IN PARIS

Miss Thompkins and Miss Nickall were a charm to dissipate all the affrighting menace of the city beyond the station. Miss Thompkins had fluffy red hair, with the freckles which too often accompany red hair, and was addressed as Tommy. Miss Nickall had fluffy grey hair, with warm, loving eyes, and was addressed as Nick. The age of either might have been anything from twenty-four to forty. The one came from Wyoming, the other from Arizona; and it was instantly clear that they were close friends. They had driven up to the terminus before going to a fancy-dress ball to be given that night in the studio of Monsieur Dauphin, a famous French painter and a delightful man. They had met Monsieur Dauphin on the previous evening on the terrace of the Cafe de Versailles, and Monsieur had said, in response to their suggestion, that he would be enchanted and too much honoured if they would bring their English friends to his little "leaping"—that was, hop.

Also they had thought that it would be nice for the travellers to be met at the terminus, especially as Miss Ingate had been very particularly recommended to Miss Thompkins by a whole group of people in London. It was Miss Thompkins who had supplied the address of reliable furnished rooms, and she and Nick would personally introduce the ladies to their landlady, who was a sweet creature.

Tommy and Nick and Miss Ingate were at once on terms of cordial informality; but the Americans seemed to be a little diffident before the companion. Their voices, at the introduction, had reinforced the surprise of their first glances. "Oh! Mrs. Moncreiff!" The slightest insistence, no more, on the "Mrs."! Nothing said, but evidently they had expected somebody else!

Then there was the boy, whom they called Musa. He was dark, slim, with timorous great eyes, and attired in red as a devil beneath his student's cloak. He apologised slowly in English for not being able to speak English. He said he was very French, and Tommy and Nick smiled, and he smiled back at them rather wistfully. When Tommy and Nick had spoken with the chauffeurs in French he interpreted their remarks. There were two motor-taxis, one for the luggage.

Miss Thompkins accompanied the luggage; she insisted on doing so. She could tell sinister tales of Paris cabmen, and she even delayed the departure in order to explain that once in the suburbs and in the pre-taxi days a cabman had threatened to drive her and himself into the Seine unless she would be his bride, and she saved herself by promising to be his bride and telling him that she lived in the Avenue de l'Opera; as soon as the cab reached a populous thoroughfare she opened the cab door and squealed and was rescued; she had let the driver go free because of his good taste.

As the procession whizzed through nocturnal streets, some thunderous with traffic, others very quiet, but all lined with lofty regular buildings, Audrey was penetrated by the romance of this city where cabmen passionately and to the point of suicide and murder adored their fares. And she thought that perhaps, after all, Madame Piriac's impression of Paris might not be entirely misleading. Miss Ingate and Nick talked easily, very charmed with one another, both excited. Audrey said little, and the dark youth said nothing. But once the dark youth murmured shyly to Audrey in English:

"Do you play at ten-nis, Madame?"

They crossed a thoroughfare that twinkled and glittered from end to end with moving sky-signs. Serpents pursued burning serpents on the heights of that thoroughfare, invisible hands wrote mystic words of warning and invitation, and blazing kittens played with balls of incandescent wool. Throngs of promenaders moved under theatrical trees that waved their pale emerald against the velvet sky, and the ground floor of every edifice was a glowing cafe, whose tables, full of idle sippers and loungers, bulged out on to the broad pavements.... The momentary vision was shut off instantly as the taxis shot down the mouth of a dark narrow street; but it had been long enough to make Audrey's heart throb.

"What is that?" she asked.

"That?" exclaimed Nick kindly. "Oh! That's only the grand boulevard."

Then they crossed the sombre, lamp-reflecting Seine, and soon afterwards the two taxis stopped at a vast black door in a very wide street of serried palatial facades that were continually shaken by the rushing tumult of electric cars. Tommy jumped out and pushed a button, and the door automatically split in two, disclosing a vast and dim tunnel. Tommy ran within, and came out again with a coatless man in a black-and-yellow striped waistcoat and a short white apron. This man, Musa, and the two chauffeurs entered swiftly into a complex altercation, which endured until Audrey had paid the chauffeurs and all the trunks had been transported behind the immense door and the door bangingly shut.

"Vehy amusing, isn't it?" whispered Miss Ingate caustically to Audrey. "Aren't they dears?"

"Madame Dubois's establishment is on the third and fourth floors," said Nick.

They climbed a broad, curving, carpeted staircase.

"We're here," said Audrey to Miss Ingate after scores of stairs.

Miss Ingate, breathless, could only smile.

And Audrey profoundly felt that she was in Paris. The mere shape of the doorknob by the side of a brass plate lettered "Madame Dubois" told her that she was in an exotic land.

And in the interior of Madame Dubois's establishment Tommy and Nick together drew apart the curtains, opened the windows, and opened the shutters of a pleasantly stuffy sitting-room. Everybody leaned out, and they saw the superb thoroughfare, straight and interminable, and the moving roofs of the tram-cars, and dwarfs on the pavements. The night was mild and languorous.

"You see that!" Nick pointed to a blaze of electricity to the left on the opposite side of the road. "That's where we shall take you to dine, after you've spruced yourselves up. You needn't bother about fancy dress. Monsieur Dauphin always has stacks of kimonos—for his models, you know."

While the travellers spruced themselves up in different bedrooms, Tommy chattered through one pair of double doors ajar, and Nick through the other, and Musa strummed with many mistakes on an antique Pleyel piano. And as Audrey listened to the talk of these acquaintances, Tommy and Nick, who in half an hour had put on the hue of her lifelong friends, and as she heard the piano, and felt the vibration of cars far beneath, she decided that she was still growing happier and happier, and that life and the world were marvellous.

A little later they passed into the cafe-restaurant through a throng of seated sippers who were spread around its portals like a defence. The interior, low, and stretching backwards, apparently endless, into the bowels of the building, was swimming in the brightest light. At a raised semicircular counter in the centre two women were enthroned, plump, sedate, darkly dressed, and of middle age. To these priestesses came a constant succession of waiters, in the classic garb of waiters, bearing trays which they offered to the gaze of the women, and afterwards throwing down coins that rang on the marble of the counter. One of the women wrote swiftly in a great tome. Both of them, while performing their duties, glanced continually into every part of the establishment, watching especially each departure and each arrival.

At scores of tables were the most heterogeneous collection of people that Audrey had ever seen; men and women, girls and old men, even a few children with their mothers. Liquids were of every colour, ices chromatic, and the scarlet of lobster made a luscious contrast with the shaded tints of salads. In the extreme background men were playing billiards at three tables. Though nearly everybody was talking, no one talked loudly, so that the resulting monotone of conversation was a gentle drone, out of which shot up at intervals the crash of crockery or a hoarse command. And this drone combined itself with the glittering light, and with the mild warmth that floated in waves through the open windows, and with the red plush of the seats, and with the rosiness of painted nymphs on the blue walls, and with the complexions of women's faces, and their hats and frocks, and with the hues of the liquids—to produce a totality of impression that made Audrey dizzy with ecstasy. This was not the Paris set forth by Madame Piriac, but it was a wondrous Paris, and in Audrey's esteem not far removed from heaven.

Miss Ingate, magnificently pale, followed Tommy and Nick with ironic delight up the long passage between the tables. Her eyes seemed to be saying: "I am overpowered, and yet there is something in me that is not overpowered, and by virtue of my kind-hearted derision I, from Essex, am superior to you all!" Audrey, with glance downcast, followed Miss Ingate, and Musa came last, sinuously. Nobody looked up at them more than casually, but at intervals during the passage Tommy and Nick nodded and smiled: "How d'ye do? How d'ye do?" "Bon soir," and answers were given in American or French voices.

They came to rest near the billiard tables, and near an aperture with a shelf where all the waiters congregated to shout their orders. A grey-haired waiter, with the rapidity and dexterity of a conjurer, laid a cloth over the marble round which they sat, Audrey and Miss Ingate on the plush bench, and Tommy and Nick, with Musa between them, on chairs opposite. The waiter then discussed with them for five minutes what they should eat, and he argued the problem seriously, wisely, helpfully, as befitted. It was Audrey, in full view of a buffet laden with shell-fish and fruit, who first suggested lobster, and lobster was chosen, nothing but lobster. Miss Ingate said that she was not a bit tired, and that lobster was her dream. The sentiment was universal at the table. When asked what she would drink, Audrey was on the point of answering "lemonade." But a doubt about the propriety of everlasting lemonade for a widow with much knowledge of the world, stopped her.

"I vote we all have grenadines," said Nick.

Grenadine was agreeable to Audrey's ear, and everyone concurred.

The ordering was always summarised and explained by Musa in a few phrases which, to Audrey, sounded very different from the French of Tommy and Nick. And she took oath that she would instantly begin to learn to speak French, not like Tommy and Nick, whose accent she cruelly despised, but like Musa.

Then Tommy and Nick removed their cloaks, and sat displayed as a geisha and a contadina, respectively. Musa had already unmasked his devilry. The cafe was not in the least disturbed by these gorgeous and strange apparitions. An orchestra began to play. Lobster arrived, and high glasses full of glinting green. Audrey ate and drank with gusto, with innocence, with the intensest love of life. And she was the most beautiful and touching sight in the cafe-restaurant. Miss Ingate, grinning, caught her eye with joyous mockery. "We are going it, aren't we, Audrey?" shrieked Miss Ingate.

Miss Thompkins and Miss Nickall began slowly to differentiate themselves in Audrey's mind. At first they were merely two American girls—the first Audrey had met. They were of about the same age—whatever that age might be—and if they were not exactly of the same age, then Tommy with red hair was older than Nick with grey hair. Indeed, Nick took the earliest opportunity to remark that her hair had turned grey at nineteen. They both had dreamy eyes that looked through instead of looking at; they were both hazy concerning matters of fact; they were both attached like a couple of aunts to Musa, who nestled between them like a cat between two cushions; they were both extraordinarily friendly and hospitable; they both painted and both had studios—in the same house; they both showed quite a remarkable admiration and esteem for all their acquaintances; and they both lacked interest in their complexions and their hair.

The resemblance did not go very much farther. Tommy, for all her praising of friends, was of a critical, curious, and analytical disposition, and her greenish eyes were always at work qualifying in a very subtle manner what her tongue said, when her tongue was benevolent, as it often was. Feminism and suffragism being the tie between the new acquaintances, these subjects were the first material of conversation, and an empress of militancy known to the world as "Rosamund" having been mentioned, Miss Ingate said with enthusiasm:

"She lives only for one thing."

"Yes," replied Tommy. "And if she got it, I guess no one would be more disgusted than she herself."

There was an instant's silence.

"Oh, Tommy!" Nick lovingly protested.

Said Miss Ingate with a comprehending satiric grin:

"I see what you mean. I quite see. I quite see. You're right, Miss Thompkins. I'm sure you're right."

Audrey decided she would have to be very clever in order to be equal to Tommy's subtlety. Nick, on the other hand, was not a bit subtle, except when she tried to imitate Tommy. Nick was kindness, and sympathy, and vagueness. You could see these admirable qualities in every curve of her face and gleam of her eyes. She was very sympathetic, but somewhat shocked when Audrey blurted out that she had not come to Paris in order to paint.

"There are at least fifty painters in this cafe this very minute," said Tommy. And somehow it was just as if she had said: "If you haven't come to Paris to paint, what have you come for?"

"Does Mr. Musa paint, too?" asked Audrey.

"Oh no!" Both his protectresses answered together, pained. Tommy added: "Musa plays the violin—of course."

And Musa blushed. Later, he murmured to Audrey across the table, while Tommy was ordering a salad, that there were tennis courts in the Luxembourg gardens.

"I used to paint," Miss Ingate broke out. "And I'm beginning to think I should like to paint again."

Said Nick, enraptured:

"I'll let you use my studio, if you will. I'd just love you to, now! Where did you study?"

"Well, it was like this," said Miss Ingate with satisfaction. "It was a long time ago. I finished painting a dog-kennel because the house-painter's wife died and he had to go to her funeral, and the dog didn't like being kept waiting. That gave me the idea. I went into water-colours, but afterwards I went back to oils. Oils seemed more real. Then I started on portraits, and I did a portrait of my Aunt Sarah from memory. After she saw it she tore up her will, and before I could get her into a good temper again she married her third husband and she had to make a new will in favour of him. So I found painting very expensive. Not that it would have made any difference, I suppose, would it? After that I went into miniatures. The same dog that I painted the kennel for ate up the best miniature I ever did. It killed him. I put a cross over his grave in the garden. All that made me see what a fool I'd been, and I exchanged my painting things for a lawn-mower, but it never turned out to be any good."

"You dear! You precious! You priceless!" cooed Nick. "I shall fix up my second best easel for you to-morrow."

"Isn't she just too lovely!" Tommy murmured aside to Audrey.

"I not much understand," said Musa.

Tommy translated to him, haltingly, and Audrey was moved to say, with energy:

"What I want most is to learn French, and I'm going to begin to-morrow morning."

Nick was kindly confusing and shaming Miss Ingate with a short history and catechism of modern art, including such names as Vuillard, Bonnard, Picasso, Signac, and Matisse—all very eagerly poured out and all very unnerving for Miss Ingate, whose directory of painting was practically limited to the names of Raphael, Sir Joshua, Rembrandt, Rubens, Gainsborough, Turner, Leighton, Millais, Gustave Dore and Frank Dicksee. When, however, Nick referred to Monsieur Dauphin, Miss Ingate was as it were washed safely ashore and said with assurance: "Oh yes! Oh yes! Oh yes!"

Tommy listened for a few moments, and then, leaning across the table and lighting a cigarette, she said in an intimate undertone to Audrey: "I hope you don't mind coming to the ball to-night. We really didn't know———" She stopped. Her eyes, ferreting in Audrey's black, completed the communication.

Unnerved for the tenth of a second, Audrey recovered and answered:

"Oh, no! I shall like it very much."

"You've been up against life!" murmured Tommy in a melting voice, gazing at her. "But how wonderful all experience is, isn't it. I once had a husband. We separated—at least, he separated. But I know the feel of being a wife."

Audrey blushed deeply. She wanted to push away all that sympathy, and she was exceedingly alarmed by the revelation that Tommy was an initiate. The widow was the merest schoolgirl once more. But her blush had saved her from a chat in which she could not conceivably have held her own.

"Excuse me being so clumsy," said Tommy contritely. "Another time." And she waved her cigarette to the waiter in demand for the bill.

It was after the orchestra had finished a tango, and while Tommy was examining the bill, that the first violin and leader, in a magenta coat, approached the table, and with a bow offered his violin deferentially to Musa. Many heads turned to watch what would happen. But Musa only shrugged his shoulders and with an exquisite gesture of refusal signified that he had to leave. Whereupon the magenta coat gracefully retired, starting a Hungarian dance as he went.

"Musa is supposed to be the greatest violinist in Paris—perhaps in the world," Tommy whispered casually to Audrey. "He used to play here, till Dauphin discovered him."

Audrey, overcome by this prodigious blow, trembled at the contemplation of her blind stupidity.

Beyond question, Musa now looked extremely important, vivid, masterful. She had been mistaking him for a nice, ornamental, useless boy.



CHAPTER X

FANCY DRESS

Just as the cafe-restaurant had been an intensification of ordinary life, so was the ball in Dauphin's studio an intensification of the cafe-restaurant. It had more colour, more noise, more music, more heat, more varied kinds of people, and, of course, far more riotous movement than the cafe-restaurant. The only quality in which the cafe-restaurant stood first was that of sustenance. Monsieur Dauphin had not attempted to rival the cafe-restaurant in the matter of food and drink. And that there was no general hope of his doing so could be deduced from the fact that many of the more experienced guests arrived with bottles, fruit, sausages, and sandwiches of their own.

When Audrey and her friends entered the precincts of the vast new white building in the Boulevard Raspail, upon whose topmost floor Monsieur Dauphin painted the portraits of the women of the French, British, and American plutocracies and aristocracies, a lift full of gay-coloured figures was just shooting upwards past the wrought-iron balustrades of the gigantic staircase. Tommy and Nick stopped to speak to a columbine who hovered between the pavement and the threshold of the house.

"I don't know whether it's the grenadine or the lobster, or whether it's Paris," said Miss Ingate confidentially in the interval; "but I can scarcely tell whether I'm standing on my head or my heels."

Before the Americans rejoined them, the lift had returned and ascended with another covey of fancy costumes, including a man with a nose a foot long and a girl with bright green hair, dressed as an acrobat. On its next journey the lift held Tommy and Nick's party, and it held no more.

When the party emerged from it, they were greeted with a cheer, hoarse and half human, by a band of light amateur mountebanks of both sexes who were huddled in a doorway. Within a quarter of an hour Audrey and Miss Ingate, after astounding struggles in a dressing-room in which Nick alone saved their lives and reputations, appeared in Japanese disguise according to promise, and nobody could tell whether Audrey was maid, wife, or widow. She might have been a creature created on the spot, for the celestial purpose of a fancy-dress ball in Monsieur Dauphin's studio.

The studio was very large and rather lofty. Its walls had been painted by gifted pupils of Monsieur Dauphin and by fellow-artists, with scenes of life according to Catullus, Theocritus, Propertius, Martial, Petronius, and other classical writers. It is not too much to say that the walls of the studio constituted a complete novelty for Audrey and Miss Ingate. Miss Ingate opened her mouth to say something, but, saying nothing, forgot for a long time to shut it again.

Chinese lanterns, electrically illuminated, were strung across the studio at a convenient height so that athletic dancers could prodigiously leap up and make them swing. Beneath this incoherent but exciting radiance the guests swayed and glided, in a joyous din, under the influence of an orchestra of men snouted like pigs and raised on a dais. In a corner was a spiral staircase leading to the flat roof of the studio and a view of all Paris. Up and down this corkscrew contending parties fought amiably for the right of way.

Tommy and Nick began instantly to perform introductions between Audrey and Miss Ingate and the other guests. In a few moments Audrey had failed to catch the names of a score and a half of people—many Americans, some French, some Argentine, one or two English. They were all very talented people, and, according to Miss Ingate, the most characteristically French were invariably either Americans or Argentines.

A telephone bell rang in the distance, and presently a toreador stood on a chair and pierced the music with a message of yells in French, and the room hugely guffawed and cheered.

"Where is the host?" Audrey asked.

"That's what the telephoning was about," said Tommy, speaking loudly against the hubbub. "He hasn't come yet. He had to rush off this afternoon to do pastel portraits of two Russian princesses at St. Germain, and he hasn't got back yet. The telephone was to say that he's started."

Then one of the introduced—it was a girl wearing a mask—took Audrey by the waist and whirled her strongly away and she was lost in the maze. Audrey's first impulse was to protest, but she said to herself: "Why protest? This is what we're here for." And she gave herself up to the dance. Her partner held her very firmly, somewhat bending over her. Neither spoke. Gyrating in long curves, with the other dancers swishing mysteriously about them like the dancers of a dream, and the music as far off as another world, they clung together in the rhythm and in the enchantment, until the music ceased.... The strong girl threw Audrey carelessly off, and walked away, breathing hard. And there was something in the strong girl's nonchalant and curt departure which woke a chord in Audrey's soul that had never been wakened before. Audrey could scarcely credit that she was on the same planet as Essex. She had many dances with men whom she hoped and believed she had been introduced to by Tommy, and no less than seventeen persons of either sex told her in unusual English that they had heard she wanted to learn French and that they would like to teach her; and then she met Musa, the devil.

Musa, with an indolent and wistful smile, suggested the roof. Audrey was now just one of the throng, and quite unconscious of herself; she fought archly and gaily on the spiral staircase exactly as she had seen others do, and at last they were on the roof, and the silhouettes of other fantastic figures and of cowled chimney pots stood out dark against the vague yellow glow of the city beneath. While Musa was pointing out the historic landmarks to her, she was thinking how she could never again be the girl who had left Moze on the previous morning. And yet Musa was so natural and so direct that it was impossible to take him for anything but a boy, and hence Audrey sank back into early girlhood, talking spasmodically to Musa as she used in school days to talk to the brother of her school friend.

"I will teach you French," said Musa, unaware that he had numerous predecessors in the offer. "But will you play tennis with me in the gardens of the Luxembourg?"

Audrey said she would, and that she would buy a racket.

"Tell me about all those artists Miss Nickall spoke of," she said. "I must know about all the artists, and all the musicians, and all the authors. I must know all about them at once. I shan't sleep until I know all their names and I can talk French. I shan't sleep."

Musa began the catalogue. When a girl came and chucked him under the chin, he angrily slapped her face. Then, to avoid complications, they descended.

In the middle of the studio, wearing a silk hat, a morning coat, striped trousers, yellow gloves, and boots with spats, stood a smiling figure.

"Voila Dauphin!" said Musa.

"Musa!" called Monsieur Dauphin, espying the youth on the staircase. Then he made a gesture to the orchestra: "Give him a violin!"

Audrey stood by Musa while he played a dance that nobody danced to, and when he had finished she was rather ashamed, under the curtain of wild cheering, because with her Essex incredulity she had not sufficiently believed in Musa's greatness.

"Permit your host to introduce himself," said a voice behind her, not in the correct English of a linguistic Frenchman, but in utterly English English. She had now descended to the floor of the studio.

Emile Dauphin raised his glossy hat, and then asked to be allowed to put it on again, as the company had decided that it was part of his costume. He had a delicious smile, at once respectful and intimate. Audrey had read somewhere that really great men were always simple and unaffected—indeed that it was often impossible to guess from their demeanour that, etc., etc.—and this experience of the first celebrity with whom she had ever spoken (except Musa, who was somehow only Musa) confirmed the statement, and confirmed also her young instinctive belief that what is printed must be true. She was beginning to feel the stealthy on-comings of fatigue, and certainly she was very nervous, but Monsieur Dauphin's quite particularly sympathetic manner, and her own sudden determination not to be a little blushing fool gave her new power.

"I can't express to you," he said, moving towards the dais and mesmerising her to keep by his side. "I can't express to you how sorry I was to be so late." He made the apology with lightness, but with sincerity. Audrey knew how polite the French were. "But truly circumstances were too much for me. Those two Russian princesses—they came to me through a mutual friend, a dear old friend of mine, very closely attached also to them. They leave to-morrow morning by the St. Petersburg express, on which they have engaged a special coach. What was I to do? I tried to tear myself away earlier, but of course there were the portrait sketches to finish, and no doubt you know the usage of the best society in Russia."

"Yes," murmured Audrey.

"Come up on the dais, will you?" he suggested. "And let us survey the scene together."

They surveyed the scene together. The snouted band was having supper on the floor in a corner, and many of the guests also were seated on the floor. Miss Ingate, intoxicated by the rapture of existence, and Miss Thompkins were carefully examining the frescoes on the walls. A young woman covered from head to foot with gold tinsel was throwing chocolates into Musa's mouth, or as near to it as she could.

"What a splendid player Mr. Musa is!" Audrey inaugurated her career as a woman of the world. "I doubt if I have ever heard such violin playing."

"I'm so glad you think so," replied Monsieur Dauphin. "Of course you know I'm very conceited about my painting. Anybody will tell you so. But beneath all that I'm not so sure. I often have the gravest doubts about my work. But I never had any doubt that when I took Musa out of the orchestra in the Cafe de Versailles I was giving a genius to the world. And perhaps that's how I shall be remembered by posterity. And if it is I shall be content."

Never before had Audrey heard anybody connect himself with posterity, and she was very much impressed. Monsieur Dauphin was resigned and yet brave. By no means convinced that posterity would do the right thing, he nevertheless had no grudge against posterity.

Just then there was a sharp scream at the top of the spiral staircase. With a smile that condoned the scream and excused his flight, Monsieur Dauphin ran to the staircase, and up it, and disappeared on to the roof. Nobody seemed to be perturbed. Audrey was left alone and conspicuous on the dais.

"Charming, isn't he?" said Miss Thompkins, arriving with Miss Ingate in front of the flower-screened platform.

"Oh! he is!" answered Audrey with sincerity, leaning downwards.

"Has he told you all about the Russian princesses?"

"Oh, yes," said Audrey, pleased.

"I thought he would," said Miss Thompkins, with a peculiar intonation.

Audrey knew then that Miss Thompkins, having first maliciously made sure that she was a ninny, was now telling her to her face that she was a ninny.

Tommy continued:

"Then I guess he told you he'd given Musa to the world."

Audrey nodded.

"Ah! I knew he would. Well, when he comes back he'll tell you that you must come to one of his real entertainments here, and that this one is nothing. Then he'll tell you about all the nobs he knows in London. And at last he'll say that you have a strangely expressive face, and he'd like to paint it and show the picture in the Salon. But he won't tell you it'll cost you forty thousand francs. So I'll tell you that, because perhaps later on, if you don't know, you might find yourself making a noise like a tenderfoot. You see, Miss Ingate hasn't concealed that you're a lady millionaire."

"No, I haven't," said Miss Ingate, glowing and yet sarcastic. "I couldn't bring myself to, because I was so anxious to see if human nature in Paris is anything like what it is in Essex."

"And why should you hide it, Winnie?" Audrey stoutly demanded.

"Well, au revoir," Tommy murmured delicately, with a very original gesture. "He's coming back."

As Monsieur Dauphin, having apparently established peace on the roof, approached again, Audrey discreetly examined his face and his demeanour, to see if she could perceive in him any of the sinister things that Tommy had implied. She was unable to make up her mind whether she could or not. But in the end she decided that she was as shrewd as anybody in the place.

"Have you been to my roof-garden, Mrs. Moncreiff?" he asked in a persuasive voice, raising his eyebrows.

She said she had, and that she thought the roof was heavenly.

Then from the corner of her eye she saw Miss Ingate and Tommy sidling mischievously away, like conspirators who have lighted a time fuse. She considered that Tommy, with her red hair and freckles, and strange glances and strange tones full of a naughty and malicious sweetness, was even more peculiar than Miss Ingate. But she was not intimidated by them nor by the illustrious Monsieur Dauphin, so perfectly master of his faculties. Rather she was exultant in the contagion of their malice. Once more she felt as if she had ceased to be a girl a very long time ago. And she was aware of agreeable and exciting temptations.

"Are you taking a house in Paris?" inquired Monsieur Dauphin.

Audrey answered primly:

"I haven't decided. Should you advise me to do so?"

He waved a hand.

"Ah! It depends on the life you wish to lead. Who knows—with a young woman who has all experience behind her and all life before her! But I do hope I may see you again. And I trust I may persuade you to come to my studio again." Audrey felt the thrill of drama as he proceeded. "This is scarcely a night for you. I ought to tell you that I give three entertainments during the autumn. To-night is the first. It is for students and those English and Americans who think they are seeing Paris here. Then I give another for the political and dramatic worlds. Each is secretly proud to meet the other. The third I reserve to my friends. Some of my many friends in London are good enough to come over specially for it. It is on Christmas Eve. I do wish you would come to that one."

"I suppose," she said, catching the diabolic glances of Miss Ingate and Tommy, "I suppose you know almost more people in London than in Paris?"

He answered:

"Well, I count among my friends more than two-thirds of the subscribers to Covent Garden Opera.... By the way, do you happen to be connected with the Moncreiffs of Suddon Wester? They have a charming house in Hyde Park Terrace. But probably you know it?"

Audrey burst out laughing. She laughed loud and violently till the tears stood in her eyes.

"Well," he said, at a loss, deprecatingly. "Perhaps these Moncreiffs are rather weird."

"I was only laughing," she said in gasps, but with a complete secret composure. "Because we had such an awful quarrel with them last year. I couldn't tell you the details. They're too shocking."

He gave a dubious smile.

"D'you know, dear young lady," he recommenced after a brief pause, "I should adore to paint a portrait of you laughing. It would be very well hung in the Salon. Your face is so strangely expressive. It is utterly different, in expression, from any other face I ever saw—and I have studied faces."

Heedless of the general interest which she was arousing, Audrey leaned on the rail of the screen of flowers, and gave herself up afresh to laughter. Monsieur Dauphin was decidedly puzzled. The affair might have ended in hysteria and confusion had not Miss Ingate, with Nick and Tommy, come hurrying up to the dais.



CHAPTER XI

A POLITICAL REFUGEE

"Rosamund has come to my studio and wants to see me at once. She has sent for me. Miss Ingate says she shall go, too."

It was these words in a highly emotionalised voice from Miss Nickall that, like a vague murmured message of vast events, drew the entire quartet away from the bright inebriated scene created by Monsieur Dauphin.

The single word "Rosamund" sufficed to break one mood and induce another in all bosoms save that of Audrey, who was in a state of permanent joyous exultation that she scarcely even attempted to control. The great militant had a surname, but it was rarely used save by police magistrates. Her Christian name alone was more impressive than the myriad cognomens of queens and princesses. Miss Nickall ran away home at once. Miss Thompkins was left to deliver Miss Ingate and Audrey at Nick's studio, which, being in the Rue Delambre, was not far away. And not the shedding of the kimono and the re-assumption of European attire could affect Audrey's spirits. Had she been capable of regret in that hour, she would have regretted the abandonment of the ball, where the refined, spiritual, strange faces of the men, and the enigmatic quality of the women, and the exceeding novelty of the social code had begun to arouse in her sentiments of approval and admiration. But she quitted the staggering frolic without a sigh; for she carried within her a frolic surpassing anything exterior or physical.

The immense flickering boulevard with its double roadway stretched away to the horizon on either hand, empty.

"What time is it?" asked Miss Ingate.

Tommy looked at her wrist-watch.

"Don't tell me! Don't tell me!" cried Audrey.

"We might get a taxi in the Rue de Babylone," Tommy suggested. "Or shall we walk?"

"We must walk," cried Audrey.

She knew the name of the street. In the distance she could recognise the dying lights of the cafe-restaurant where they had eaten. She felt already like an inhabitant of the dreamed-of city. It was almost inconceivable to her that she had been within it for only a few hours, and that England lay less than a day behind her in the past, and Moze less than two days. And Aguilar the morose, and the shuttered rooms of Flank Hall, shot for an instant into her mind and out again.

The other two women walked rather quickly, mesmerised possibly by the magic of the illustrious Christian name, and Audrey gave occasional schoolgirlish leaps by their side. A little policeman appeared inquisitive from a by-street, and Audrey tossed her head as if saying: "Pooh! I belong here. All the mystery of this city is mine, and I am as at home as in Moze Street."

And as they surged through the echoing solitude of the boulevard, and as they crossed the equally tremendous boulevard that cut through it east and west, Tommy told the story of Nick's previous relations with Rosamund. Nick had met Rosamund once before through her English chum, Betty Burke, an art student who had ultimately sacrificed art to the welfare of her sex, but who with Mrs. Burke had shared rooms and studio with Nick for many months. Tommy's narrative was spotted with hardly perceptible sarcasms concerning art, women, Betty Burke, Mrs. Burke, and Nick; but she put no barb into Rosamund. And when Miss Ingate, who had never met Rosamund, asked what Rosamund amounted to in the esteem of Tommy, Tommy evaded the question. Miss Ingate remembered, however, what she had said in the cafe-restaurant.

Then they turned into the Rue Delambre, and Tommy halted them in the deep obscurity in front of another of those huge black doors which throughout Paris seemed to guard the secrets of individual life. An automobile was waiting close by. A little door in the huge one clicked and yielded, and they climbed over a step into black darkness.

"Thompkins!" called Miss Thompkins loudly to the black darkness, to reassure the drowsy concierge in his hidden den, shutting the door with a bang behind them; and, groping for the hands of the others, she dragged them forward stumbling.

"I never have a match," she said.

They blundered up tenebrous stairs.

"We're just passing my door," said Tommy. "Nick's is higher up."

Then a perpendicular slit of light showed itself—and a portal slightly open could be distinguished.

"I shall quit here," said Tommy. "You go right in."

"You aren't leaving us?" exclaimed Miss Ingate in alarm.

"I won't go in," Tommy persisted in a quiet satiric tone. "I'll leave my door open below, and see you when you come down."

She could be heard descending.

"Why, I guess they're here," said a voice, Nick's, within, and the door was pulled wide open.

"My legs are all of a tremble!" muttered Miss Ingate.

Nick's studio seemed larger than reality because of its inadequate illumination. On a small paint-stained table in the centre was an oil-lamp beneath a round shade that had been decorated by some artist's hand with a series of reclining women in many colours. This lamp made a moon in the midnight of the studio, but it was a moon almost without rays; the shade seemed to imprison the light, save that which escaped from its superior orifice. Against the table stood a tall thin woman in black. Her face was lit by the rays escaping upward; a pale, firm, bland face, with rather prominent cheeks, loose grey hair above, surmounted by a toque. The dress was dark, and the only noticeable feature of it was that the sleeves were finished in white linen; from these the hands emerged calm and veined under the lampshade; in one of them a pair of gloves were clasped. On the table lay a thin mantle.

At the back of the studio there sat another woman, so engloomed that no detail of her could be distinguished.

"As I was saying," the tall upright woman resumed as soon as Miss Ingate and Audrey had been introduced. "Betty Burke is in prison. She got six weeks this morning. She may never come out again. Almost her last words from the dock were that you, Miss Nickall, should be asked to go to London to look after Mrs. Burke, and perhaps to take Betty's place in other ways. She said that her mother preferred you to anybody else, and that she was sure you would come. Shall you?"

The accents were very clear, the face was delicately smiling, the little gestures had a quite tranquil quality. Rosamund did not seem to care whether Miss Nickall obeyed the summons or not. She did not seem to care about anything whatever except her own manner of existing. She was the centre of Paris, and Paris was naught but a circumference for her. All phenomena beyond the individuality of the woman were reduced to the irrelevant and the negligible. It would have been absurd to mention to her costume balls. The frost of her indifference would have wilted them into nothingness.

"Yes, of course, I shall go," Nick answered.

"When?" was the implacable question.

"Oh! By the first train," said Nick eagerly. As she approached the lamp, the gleam of the devotee could be seen in her gaze. In one moment she had sacrificed Paris and art and Tommy and herself, and had risen to the sacred ardour of a vocation. Rosamund was well accustomed to watching the process, and she gave not the least sign of satisfaction or approval.

"I ought to tell you," she went on, "that I came over from London suddenly by the afternoon service in order to escape arrest. I am now a political refugee. Things have come to this pass. You will do well to leave by the first train. That is why I decided to call here before going to bed."

"Where's Tommy?" asked Nick, appealing wildly to Miss Ingate and Audrey. Upon being answered she said, still more wildly: "I must see her. Can you—No, I'll run down myself." In the doorway she turned round: "Mrs. Moncreiff, would you and Miss Ingate like to have my studio while I'm away? I should just love you to. There's a very nice bed over there behind the screen, and a fair sort of couch over here. Do say you will! Do!"

"Oh! We will!" Miss Ingate replied at once, reassuringly, as though in haste to grant the supreme request of some condemned victim. And indeed Miss Nickall appeared ready to burst into tears if she should be thwarted.

As soon as Nick had gone, Miss Ingate's smiling face, nervous, intimidated, audacious, sardonic, and good humoured, moved out of the gloom nearer to Rosamund.

"You knew I played the barrel organ all down Regent Street?" she ventured, blushing.

"Ah!" murmured Rosamund, unmoved. "It was you who played the barrel-organ? So it was."

"Yes," said Miss Ingate. "But I'm like you. I don't care passionately for prison. Eh! Eh! I'm not so vehy, vehy fond of it. I don't know Miss Burke, but what a pity she has got six weeks, isn't it? Still, I was vehy much struck by what someone said to me to-day—that you'd be vehy sorry if women did get the vote. I think I should be sorry, too—you know what I mean."

"Perfectly," ejaculated Rosamund, with a pleasant smile.

"I hope I'm not skidding," said Miss Ingate still more timidly, but also with a sardonic giggle, looking round into the gloom. "I do skid sometimes, you know, and we've just come away from a——"

She could not finish.

"And Mrs. Moncreiff, if I've got the name right, is she with us, too?" asked Rosamund, miraculously urbane. And added: "I hear she has wealth and is the mistress of it."

Audrey jumped up, smiling, and lifting her veil. She could not help smiling. The studio, the lamp, Rosamund with her miraculous self-complacency, Nick with her soft, mad eyes and wistful voice, the blundering ruthless Miss Ingate, all seemed intensely absurd to her. Everything seemed absurd except dancing and revelry and coloured lights and strange disguises and sensuous contacts. She had the most careless contempt, stiffened by a slight loathing, for political movements and every melancholy effort to reform the world. The world did not need reforming and did not want to be reformed.

"Perhaps you don't know my story," Audrey began, not realising how she would continue. "I am a widow. I made an unhappy marriage. My husband on the day after our wedding-day began to eat peas with his knife. In a week I was forced to leave him. And a fortnight later I heard that he was dead of blood-poisoning. He had cut his mouth."

And she thought:

"What is the matter with me? I have ruined myself." All her exultation had collapsed.

But Rosamund remarked gravely:

"It is a common story."

Suddenly there was a movement in the obscure corner where sat the unnamed and unintroduced lady. This lady rose and came towards the table. She was very elegant in dress and manner, and she looked maturely young.

"Madame Piriac," announced Rosamund.

Audrey recoiled.... Gazing hard at the face, she saw in it a vague but undeniable resemblance to certain admired photographs which had arrived at Moze from France.

"Pardon me!" said Madame Piriac in English with a strong French accent. "I shall like very much to hear the details of this story of petits pois." The tone of Madame Piriac's question was unexceptionable; it took account of Audrey's mourning attire, and of her youthfulness; but Audrey could formulate no answer to it. Instead of speaking she gave a touch to her veil, and it dropped before her piquant, troubled, inscrutable face like a screen.

Miss Ingate said with noticeable calm, but also with the air of a conspirator who sees danger to a most secret machination:

"I'm afraid Mrs. Moncreiff won't care to go into details."

It was neatly done. Madame Piriac brought the episode to a close with a sympathetic smile and an apposite gesture. And Audrey, safe behind her veil, glanced gratefully and admiringly at Miss Ingate, who, taken quite unawares, had been so surprisingly able thus to get her out of a scrape. She felt very young and callow among these three women, and the mere presence of Madame Piriac, of whom years ago she had created for herself a wondrous image, put her into a considerable flutter. On the whole she was ready to believe that the actual Madame Piriac was quite equal to the image of her founded on photographs and letters. She set her teeth, and decided that Madame Piriac should not learn her identity—yet! There was little risk of her discovering it for herself, for no photograph of Audrey had gone to Paris for a dozen years, and Miss Ingate's loyalty was absolute.

As Audrey sat down again, the illustrious Rosamund took a chair near her, and it could not be doubted that the woman had the mien and the carriage of a leader.

"You are very rich, are you not?" asked Rosamund, in a tone at once deferential and intimate, and she smiled very attractively in the gloom. Impossible not to reckon with that smile, as startling as it was seductive!

Evidently Nick had been communicative.

"I suppose I am," murmured Audrey, like a child, and feeling like a child. Yet at the same time she was asking herself with fierce curiosity: "What has Madame Piriac got to do with this woman?"

"I hear you have eight or ten thousand a year and can do what you like with it. And you cannot be more than twenty-three.... What a responsibility it must be for you! You are a friend of Miss Ingate's and therefore on our side. Indeed, if a woman such as you were not on our side, I wonder whom we could count on. Miss Ingate is, of course, a subscriber to the Union—"

"Only a very little one," cried Miss Ingate.

Audrey had never felt so abashed since an ex-parlourmaid at Flank Hall, who had left everything to join the Salvation Army, had asked her once in the streets of Colchester whether she had found salvation. She knew that she, if any one, ought to subscribe to the Suffragette Union, and to subscribe largely. For she was a convinced suffragette by faith, because Miss Ingate was a convinced suffragette. If Miss Ingate had been a Mormon, Audrey also would have been a Mormon. And, although she hated to subscribe, she knew also that if Rosamund demanded from her any subscription, however large—even a thousand pounds—she would not know how to refuse. She felt before Rosamund as hundreds of women, and not a few men, had felt.

"I may be leaving for Germany to-morrow," Rosamund proceeded. "I may not see you again—at any rate for many weeks. May I write to London that you mean to support us?"

Audrey was giving herself up for lost, and not without reason. She foreshadowed a future of steely self-sacrifice, propaganda, hammers, riots, and prison; with no self-indulgence in it, no fine clothes, no art, and no young men save earnest young men. She saw herself in the iron clutch of her own conscience and sense of duty. And she was frightened. But at that moment Nick rushed into the room, and the spell was broken. Nick considered that she had the right to monopolise Rosamund, and she monopolised her.

Miss Ingate prudently gathered Audrey to her side, and was off with her. Nick ran to kiss them, and told them that Tommy was waiting for them in the other studio. They groped downstairs, guided by a wisp of light from Tommy's studio.

"Why didn't you come up?" asked Miss Ingate of Tommy in Tommy's antechamber. "Have you and she quarrelled?"

"Oh no!" said Tommy. "But I'm afraid of her. She'd grab me if she had the least chance, and I don't want to be grabbed."

Tommy was arranging to escort them home, and had already got out on the landing, when Rosamund and Madame Piriac, followed by Nick holding a candle aloft, came down the stairs. A few words of explanation, a little innocent blundering on the part of Nick, a polite suggestion by Madame Piriac, and an imperious affirmative by Rosamund—and the two strangers to Paris found themselves in Madame Piriac's waiting automobile on the way to their rooms!

In the darkness of the car the four women could not distinguish each other's faces. But Rosamund's voice was audible in a monologue, and Miss Ingate trembled for Audrey and for the future.

"This is the most important political movement in the history of the world," Rosamund was saying, not at all in a speechifying manner, but quite intimately and naturally. "Everybody admits that, and that's what makes it so extraordinarily interesting, and that is why we have had such magnificent help from women in the very highest positions who wouldn't dream of touching ordinary politics. It's a marvellous thing to be in the movement, if we can only realise it. Don't you think so, Mrs. Moncreiff?"

Audrey made no response. The other two sat silent. Miss Ingate thought:

"What's the girl going to do next? Surely she could mumble something."

The car curved and stopped.

"Here we are," said Miss Ingate, delighted. "And thank you so much. I suppose all we have to do is just to push the bell and the door opens. Now Audrey, dear."

Audrey did not stir.

"Mon Dieu!" murmured Madame Piriac, "What has she, little one?"

Rosamund said stiffly and curtly:

"She is asleep.... It is very late. Four o'clock."

Excellent as was Audrey's excuse for her lapse, Rosamund was not at all pleased. That slumber was one of Rosamund's rare defeats.



CHAPTER XII

WIDOWHOOD IN THE STUDIO

Audrey was in a white pique coat and short skirt, with pale blue blouse and pale blue hat—and at the extremity blue stockings and white tennis shoes. She picked up a tennis racket in its press, and prepared to leave the studio. She had bought the coat, the skirt, the blouse, the hat, the tennis shoes, the racket, the press, and practically all she wore, visible and invisible, at that very convenient and immense shop, the Bon Marche, whose only drawback was that it was always full. Everybody in the Quarter, except a few dolls not in earnest, bought everything at the Bon Marche, because the Bon Marche was so comprehensive and so reliable. If you desired a toothbrush, the Bon Marche not only supplied it, but delivered it in a 30-h.p. motor-van manned by two officials in uniform. And if you desired a bedroom suite, a pair of corsets, a box of pastels, an anthracite stove, or a new wallpaper, the Bon Marche would never shake its head.

And Audrey was now of the Quarter. Many simple sojourners in the Quarter tried to imply the Latin Quarter when they said the Quarter. But the Quarter was only the Montparnasse Quarter. Nevertheless, it sufficed. It had its own boulevards, restaurants, cafes, concerts, theatres, palaces, shops, gardens, museums, and churches. There was no need to leave it, and if you were a proper amateur of the Quarter, you never did leave it save to scoff at other Quarters. Sometimes you fringed the Latin Quarter in the big cafes of the Boulevard St. Michel, and sometimes you strolled northwards as far as the Seine, and occasionally even crossed the Seine in order to enter the Louvre, which lined the other bank, but you did not go any farther. Why should you?

Audrey had become so acclimatised to the Quarter that Miss Nickall's studio seemed her natural home. It was very typically a woman's studio of the Quarter. About thirty feet each way and fourteen feet high, with certain irregularities of shape, it was divided into corners. There were the two bed-corners, which were lounge-corners during the day; the afternoon-tea corner, with a piece or two of antique furniture and some old silk hangings, where on high afternoons tea was given to droves of visitors; and there was the culinary corner, with spirit-lamps, gas-rings, kettles, and a bowl or two over which you might spend a couple of arduous hours in ineffectually whipping up a mayonnaise for an impromptu lunch. Artistic operations were carried out in the middle of the studio, not too far from the stove, which never went out from November to May. A large mirror hung paramount on one wall. The remaining spaces of the studio were filled with old easels, canvases, old frames, old costumes and multifarious other properties for pictures, trunks, lamps, boards, tables, and bric-a-brac bought at the Ham-and-Old-Iron Fair. There were a million objects in the studio, and their situations had to be, and were, learnt off by heart. The scene of the toilette was a small attached chamber.

The housekeeping combined the simplicity of the early Christians with the efficient organising of the twentieth century. It began at about half-past seven, when unseen but heard beings left fresh rolls and the New York Herald or the Daily Mail at the studio door. You made your own bed, just as you cleaned your own boots or washed your own face. The larder consisted of tins of coffee, tea, sugar, and cakes, with an intermittent supply of butter and lemons. The infusing of tea and coffee was practised in perfection. It mattered not in the least whether toilette or breakfast came first, but it was exceedingly important that the care of the stove should precede both. Between ten and eleven the concierge's wife arrived with tools and utensils; she swept and dusted under a considerable percentage of the million objects—and the responsibilities of housekeeping were finished until the next day, for afternoon tea, if it occurred, was a diversion and not a toil.

A great expanse of twelve to fifteen hours lay in front of you. It was not uncomfortably and unchangeably cut into fixed portions by the incidence of lunch and dinner. You ate when you felt inclined to eat, and nearly always at restaurants where you met your acquaintances. Meals were the least important happenings of the day. You had no reliable watch, and you needed none, for you had no fixed programme. You worked till you had had enough of work. You went forth into the world exactly when the idea took you. If you were bored, you found a friend and went to sit in a cafe. You were ready for anything. The word "rule" had been omitted from your dictionary. You retired to bed when the still small voice within murmured that there was naught else to do. You woke up in the morning amid cups and saucers, lingerie, masterpieces, and boots. And the next day was the same. All the days were the same. Weeks passed with inexpressible rapidity, and all things beyond the Quarter had the quality of vague murmurings and noises behind the scenes.

May had come. Audrey and Miss Ingate had lived in the studio for six months before they realised that they had settled down there and that habits had been formed. Still, they had accomplished something. Miss Ingate had gone back into oils and was attending life classes, and Audrey, by terrible application and by sitting daily at the feet of an oldish lady in black, and by refusing to speak English between breakfast and dinner, had acquired a good accent and much fluency in the French tongue. Now, when she spoke French, she thought in French, and she was extremely proud of the achievement. Also she was acquainted with the names and styles of all known modern painters from pointillistes to cubistes, and, indeed, with the latest eccentricities in all the arts. She could tell who was immortal, and she was fully aware that there was no real painting in England. In brief, she was perhaps more Parisian even than she had hoped. She had absorbed Paris into her system. It was still not the Paris of her early fancy; in particular, it lacked elegance; but it richly satisfied her.

She had on this afternoon of young May an appointment with a young man. And the appointment seemed quite natural, causing no inward disturbance. Less than ever could she understand her father's ukases against young men and against every form of self-indulgence. Now, when she had the idea of doing a thing, she merely did it. Her instincts were her only guide, and, though her instincts were often highly complex, they seldom puzzled her. The old instinct that the desire to do a thing was a sufficient reason against doing it, had expired. For many weeks she had lived with a secret fear that such unbridled conduct must lead to terrible catastrophes, but as nothing happened this fear also expired. She was constantly with young men, and often with men not young; she liked it, but just as much she liked being with women. She never had any difficulties with men. Miss Thompkins insinuated at intervals that she flirted, but she had the sharpest contempt for flirtation, and as a practice put it on a level with embezzlement or arson. Miss Thompkins, however, kept on insinuating. Audrey regarded herself as decidedly wiser than Miss Thompkins. Her opinions on vital matters changed almost weekly, but she was always absolutely sure that the new opinion was final and incontrovertible. Her scorn of the old English Audrey, though concealed, was terrific.

And it is to be remembered that she was a widow. She was never half a second late, now, in replying when addressed as "Mrs. Moncreiff." Frequently she thought that she in fact was a widow. Widowhood was a very advantageous state. It had a free pass to all affairs of interest. It opened wide the door of the world. It recked nothing of girlish codes. It abolished discussions concerning conventional propriety. Its chief defect, for Audrey, was that if she met another widow, or even a married woman, she had to take heed lest she stumbled. Fortunately, neither widows nor wives were very prevalent in the Quarter. And Audrey had attained skill in the use of the state of widowhood. She told no more infantile perilous tales about husbands who ate peas with a knife. In her thankfulness that the tyrannic Rosamund had gone to Germany, and that Madame Piriac had vanished back into unknown Paris, Audrey was at pains to take to heart the lesson of a semi-hysterical blunder.

She descended the dark, dusty oak stairs utterly content. And at the door of the gloomy den of the concierge the concierge's wife was standing. She was a new wife, the young mate of a middle-aged husband, and she had only been illuminating the den (which was kitchen, parlour, and bedroom in a space of ten feet by eight) for about a month. She was plump and pretty, and also she was fair, which was unusual for a Frenchwoman. She wore a striped frock and a little black apron, and her yellow hair was waved with art. Audrey offered her the key of the studio with a smile, and, as Audrey expected, the concierge's wife began to chatter. The concierge's wife loved to chatter with Anglo-Saxon tenants, and she specially enjoyed chattering with Audrey, because of the superior quality of Audrey's French and of her tips. Audrey listened, proud because she could understand so well and answer so fluently.

The sun, which in May shone on the courtyard for about forty minutes in the afternoon on clear days, caught these two creatures in the same beam. They made a delicious sight—Audrey dark, with her large forehead and negligible nose, and the concierge's wife rather doll-like in the regularity of her features. They were delicious not only because of their varied charm, but because they were so absurdly wise and omniscient, and because they had come to settled conclusions about every kind of worldly problem. Youth and vitality equalised their ranks, and the fact that Audrey possessed many ascertained ancestors, and a part of the earth's surface, and much money, and that the concierge's wife possessed nothing but herself and a few bits of furniture, was not of the slightest importance.

The concierge's wife, after curiosity concerning tennis, grew confidential about herself, and more confidential. And at last she lowered her tones, and with sparkling eyes communicated information to Audrey in a voice that was little more than a whisper.

"Oh! truly? I must go," hastily said Audrey, blushing, and off she ran, reduced in an instant to the schoolgirl. Her departure was a retreat. These occasional discomfitures made a faint blot on the excellence of being a widow.



CHAPTER XIII

THE SWOON

In the north-east corner of the Luxembourg Gardens, where the lawn-tennis courts were permitted by a public authority which was strangely impartial and cosmopolitan in the matter of games, Miss Ingate sat sketching a group of statuary with the Rue de Vaugirard behind it. She was sketching in the orthodox way, on the orthodox stool, with the orthodox combined paint-box and easel, and the orthodox police permit in the cover of the box.

The bright and warm weather was tonic; it accounted for the whole temperament of Parisians. Under such a sky, with such a delicate pricking vitalisation in the air, it was impossible not to be Parisian. The trees, all arranged in beautiful perspectives, were coming into leaf, and through their screens could be seen everywhere children shouting as they played at ball and top, and both kinds of nurses, and scores of perambulators and mothers, and a few couples dallying with their sensations, and old men reading papers, and old women knitting and relating anecdotes or entire histories. And nobody was curious beyond his own group. The people were perfectly at home in this grandiose setting of gardens and fountains and grey palaces, with theatres, boulevards and the odour and roar of motor-buses just beyond the palisades. And Miss Ingate in the exciting sunshine gazed around with her subdued Essex grin, as if saying: "It's the most topsy-turvy planet that I was ever on, and why am I, of all people, trying to make this canvas look like a piece of sculpture and a street?"

"Now, Miss Ingate," said tall red-haired Tommy, who was standing over her. "Before you go any farther, do look at the line of roofs and see how interesting it is; it's really full of interest. And you've simply not got on speaking terms with it yet."

"No more I have! No more I have!" cried Miss Ingate, glancing round at Audrey, who was swinging her racket. "Thank you, Tommy. I ought to have thought of it for my own sake, because roofs are so much easier than statues, and I must get an effect somewhere, mustn't I?"

Tommy winked at Audrey. But Tommy's wink was as naught to the great invisible wink of Miss Ingate, the everlasting wink that derided the universe and the sun himself.

Then Musa appeared, with paraphernalia, at the end of a path. Accompanying him was a specimen of the creature known on tennis lawns as "a fourth." He was almost nameless, tall, very young, with the seedlings of a moustache and a space of nude calf between his knickerbockers and his socks. He was very ceremonious, shy, ungainly and blushful. He played a fair-to-middling game; and nothing more need be said of him.

Musa by contrast was an accomplished man of the world, and the fact that the fourth obviously regarded him as a hero helped Musa to behave in a manner satisfactory to himself in front of these English and American women, so strange, so exotic, so kind, and so disconcerting. Musa looked upon Britain as a romantic isle where people died for love. And as for America, in his mind it was as sinister, as wondrous, and as fatal as the Indies might seem to a bank clerk in Bradford. He had need of every moral assistance in this or any other social ordeal. For, though he was still the greatest violinist in Paris, and perhaps in the world, he could not yet prove this profound truth by the only demonstration which the world accepts.

If he played in studios he was idolised. If he played at small concerts in unknown halls he was received with rapture. But he was never lionised. The great concert halls never saw him on their platforms; his name was never in the newspapers; and hospitable personages never fought together for his presence at their tables, even if occasionally they invited him to perform for charity in return for a glass of claret and a sandwich. Monsieur Dauphin had attempted to force the invisible barriers for him, but without success. All his admirers in the Quarter stuck to it that he was in the rank of Kreisler and Ysaye; at the same time they were annoyed with him inasmuch as he did not force the world to acknowledge the prophetic good taste of the Quarter. And Musa made mistakes. He ought to have arrived at studios in a magnificent automobile, and to have given superb and uproarious repasts, and to have rendered innumerable women exquisitely unhappy. Whereas he arrived by tube or bus, never offered hospitality of any sort, and was like a cat with women. Hence the attitude of the Quarter was patronising, as if the Quarter had said: "Yes, he is the greatest violinist in Paris and perhaps in the world; but that's all, and it isn't enough."

The young man and the boy made ready for the game as for a gladiatorial display. Their frowning seriousness proved that they had comprehended the true British idea of sport. Musa came round the net to Audrey's side, but Audrey said in French:

"Miss Thompkins and I will play together. See, we are going to beat you and Gustave."

Musa retired. A few indifferent spectators had collected. Gustave, the fourth, had to serve.

"Play!" he muttered, in a thick and threatening voice, whose depth was the measure of his nervousness.

He served a double fault to Tommy, and then a fault to Audrey. The fourth ball he got over. Audrey played it. The two males rushed with appalling force together on the centre line in pursuit, and a terrible collision occurred. Musa fell away from Gustave as from a wall. When he arose out of the pebbly dust his right arm hung very limp from the shoulder. No sooner had he risen than he sank again, and the blood began to leave his face, and his eyes closed. The fourth, having recovered from the collision, knelt down by his side, and gazed earnestly at him. Tommy and Audrey hurried towards the statuesque group, and Audrey was thinking: "Why did I refuse to let him play with me? If he had played with me there would have been no accident." She reproached herself because she well knew that only out of the most absurd contrariness had she repulsed Musa. Or was it that she had repulsed him from fear of something that Tommy might say or look?

In a few seconds, strongly drawn by this marvellous piece of luck, promenaders were darting with joyous rapidity from north, south, east and west to witness the tragedy. There were nurses with coloured streamers six feet long, lusty children, errand boys, lads, and sundry nondescript men, some of whom carefully folded up their newspapers as they hurried to the cynosure. They beheld the body as though it were a corpse, and the corpse of an enemy; they formulated and discussed theories of the event; they examined minutely the rackets which had been thrown on the ground. They were exercising the immemorial rights of unmoved curiosity; they held themselves as indifferent as gods, and the murmur of their impartial voices floated soothingly over Musa, and the shadow of their active profiles covered him from the sparkling sunshine. Somebody mentioned policemen, in the plural, but none came. All remarked in turn that the ladies were English, as though that were a sufficient explanation of the whole affair.

No one said:

"It is Musa, the greatest violinist in Paris and perhaps in Europe."

Desperately Audrey stooped and seized Musa beneath the armpits to lift him to a sitting position.

"You'd better leave him alone," said Tommy, with a kind of ironic warning and innuendo.

But Audrey still struggled with the mass, convinced that she was showing initiative and firmness of character. The fourth with fierce vigour began to aid her, and another youth from the crowd was joining the enterprise when Miss Ingate arrived from her stool.

"Drop him, you silly little thing!" adjured Miss Ingate. "Instead of lifting his head you ought to lift his feet."

Audrey stared uncertain for a moment, and then let the mass subside. Whereupon Miss Ingate with all her strength lifted both legs to the height of her waist, giving Musa the appearance of a wheelless barrow.

"You want to let the blood run into his head," said Miss Ingate with a self-conscious grin at the increasing crowd. "People only faint because the blood leaves their heads—that's why they go pale."

Musa's cheeks showed a tinge of red. You could almost see the precious blood being decanted by Miss Ingate out of the man's feet into his head. In a minute he opened his eyes. Miss Ingate lowered the legs.

"It was only the pain that made him feel queer," she said.

The episode was over, and the crowd very gradually and reluctantly scattered, disappointed at the lack of a fatal conclusion. Musa stood up, smiling apologetically, and Audrey supported him by the left arm, for the right could not be touched.

"Hadn't you better take him home, Mrs. Moncreiff?" Tommy suggested. "You can get a taxi here in the Rue de Vaugirard." She did not smile, but her green eyes glinted.

"Yes, I will," said Audrey curtly.

And Tommy's eyes glinted still more.

"And I shall get a doctor," said Audrey. "His arm may be broken."

"I should," Tommy concurred with gravity.

"Well, if it is, I can't set it," said Miss Ingate quizzically. "I was getting on so well with the high lights on that statue. I'll come along back to the studio in about half an hour."

The fourth, who had been hovering near like a criminal magnetised by his crime, bounded off furiously at the suggestion that he should stop a taxi at the entrance to the gardens.

"I hope he has broken his arm and he can never play any more," thought Audrey, astoundingly, as she and the fourth helped pale Musa into the open taxi. "It will just serve those two right." She meant Miss Ingate and Tommy.

No sooner did the taxi start than Musa began to cry. He did not seem to care that he was in the midst of a busy street, with a piquant widow by his side.



CHAPTER XIV

MISS INGATE POINTS OUT THE DOOR

"Why did you cry this afternoon, Musa?"

Musa made no reply.

Audrey was lighting the big lamp in the Moncreiff-Ingate studio. It made exactly the same moon as it had made on the night in the previous autumn when Audrey had first seen it. She had brought Musa to the studio because she did not care to take him to his own lodgings. (As a fact, nobody that she knew, except Musa, had ever seen Musa's lodgings.) This was almost the first moment they had had to themselves since the visit of the little American doctor from the Rue Servandoni. The rumour of Musa's misfortune had spread through the Quarter like the smell of a fire, and various persons of both sexes had called to inspect, to sympathise, and to take tea, which Audrey was continually making throughout the late afternoon. Musa had had an egg for his tea, and more than one girl had helped to spread the yolk and the white on pieces of bread-and-butter, for the victim of destiny had his right arm in a sling. Audrey had let them do it, as a mother patronisingly lets her friends amuse her baby.

In the end they had all gone; Tommy had enigmatically looked in and gone, and Miss Ingate had gone to dine at the favourite restaurant of the hour in the Rue Leopold Robert. Audrey had refused to go, asserting that which was not true; namely, that she had had an enormous tea, including far too many petits fours. Miss Ingate in departing had given a glance at her sketch (fixed on the easel), and another at Audrey, and another at Musa, all equally ironic and kindly.

Musa also had declined dinner, but he had done nothing to indicate that he meant to leave. He sat mournful and passive in a basket chair, his sling making a patch of white in the gloom. The truth was that he suffered from a disability not uncommon among certain natures: he did not know how to go. He could arrive with ease, but he was no expert at vanishing. Audrey was troubled. As suited her age and condition, she was apt to feel the responsibility of the whole universe. She knew that she was responsible for Musa's accident, and now she was beginning to be aware that she was responsible for his future as well. She was sure that he needed encouragement and guidance. She pictured him with his fiddle under his chin, masterful, confident, miraculous, throwing a spell over everyone within earshot. But actually she saw him listless and vanquished in the basket chair, and she perceived that only a strongly influential and determined woman, such as herself, could save him from disaster. No man could do it. His tears had shaken her. She was willing to make allowances for a foreigner, but she had never seen a man cry before, and the spectacle was very disturbing. It inspired her with a fear that even she could not be the salvation of Musa.