The true inwardness of the phrase "_jusqu' à Paris_" was now realized, when Ermengarde found herself in great peace, though only half fed, facing the engine in her own compartment, while the lights of Paris twinkled past for some twenty minutes. Then another convulsion of nature seemed to take place, and the world again began to run away backwards from her dizzied sight. "It will turn again at Marseilles," her fellow traveller said cheerily, and at this terrible news there was nothing for it--since the other compartment was now occupied by two men--but to stand, facing the seat, and occasionally fall hither and thither in the rocking of the train, until her companion piled their two bundles of rugs together against the wooden partition and she sat on them, her back stiffened miserably against the straight wooden partition, and her legs jammed between knee and ankle hard against the edge of the seat, and her feet hanging (the space between wall and seat being about fifteen inches, and she a full-sized and shapely lass) in a position to which St. Lawrence's gridiron was luxury, and which soon produced such faintness as had to be treated with brandy. "And if this," said Ermengarde, when the spirit ran through her veins and restored her speech, "if this is a _Train de Luxe_, give me the commonest third-class carriage, with at least a floor to sit and fall upon!" Chapter IV The Azure Shore Was it a dream, or had she really seen the Anarchist's bearded, goggled face bending over her in close proximity to her fellow-traveller's? Who could say? These two were shrouded in mystery, and permeated with intrigue, phantasmic, unreal. The woman professed not to have observed the man, and when asked to notice him as he passed their door in the corridor, had stared blankly in every other direction, looked at the conductor, attendants, other passengers, but always failed to perceive a man with beard and goggles. Yet, when sitting on the jolting little seat in the corridor, while the attendant made up the beds, at her fellow-traveller's kind suggestion, so that she might lie facing the engine, Ermengarde, now wide awake and sensible, could have taken her oath that she saw these intriguers talking together, in the little lobby at the entrance end of the corridor. "Talking to whom?" the woman of mystery replied, with that baffling, stony-blank look that she put on like a mask at times. "Yes, I asked the man to make up the beds at once, that you might face the engine. See what nice bedding they give us; sheets, pillow-cases, all complete, and snowy white--so different from London-washed linen. I shall be glad to go to bed myself, after all the shaking and rattling. Which man did you say? I see nobody with a beard. Let us smile at the bed-maker as if we meant tips--five-franc smiles. He's very civil. No; he's clean-shaven. So sorry going backwards upsets you."