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'Opéra; 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 café, 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 façades 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.