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.”