"Well, that can stand over for the present. Come and see the curtain-wall or whatever it is in the cellars of the Hôtel de la Poste. Come now. You can fetch your canvases to-morrow. Get your things on, Jennie." "They are on," said Jennie. "Then just let me leave you for a minute or two." I passed down that fissure of a staircase again, opened the door of the cabaret, and beckoned to Madame. There, at the foot of the stairs, and in complete darkness except for the inch that the door was left open, we had our low conversation. "Tout va bien, M'sieu'?" she asked with anxious sympathy. "Oui, Madame. The coach will take away your Cendrillon immediately." "Is it not as I said to my husband! And M'sieu' Arnaud also goes?" "Naturally. They will depart in a few minutes. As for their account, it is I who will regulate that if you will prepare it for to-morrow. And one does not buy goodness of heart, Madame; nevertheless----" Nevertheless, in the short struggle of hands in the darkness, the hand that proffered and the hand that refused, the hand that proffered was the victor. I re-ascended to their room. The other time I had not knocked, but this time I did so. They were as I had left them--ready in what they stood up in. He carried the little black bundle of her necessaries and his own. They took a last look round that warped and wonderful and memory-haunted room.... But I had given them five minutes with its memories while I had negotiated with Madame.... "Ready?" I said. We descended that interior crack for the last time. There was a sudden hush in the kitchen as we entered. The blonde heads, the dark heads, turned above the tunics of black and horizon-blue, faces watched us round the stacked-up képis on the table. But though probably little else had been talked of for the last hour, none was supposed to know that I was the Fairy Godmother who had brought the coach for Cinderella. Derry took no farewell of the copains who, with sundry other nationalities, were the French population of France. Only Jennie ran towards Madame and was pressed for a minute against a bosom well able to sustain her weight. Derry got out the bicycles from behind the door. Outside he walked ahead between them. Jennie and I followed him along the Rue de la Cordonnerie. A quarter of an hour later I had asked Madame at my hotel to be so obliging as to allow me the use of her telephone. There was no telephone at Ker Annic, but there was one at the Beverleys' hotel, and I knew that Beverley would see to it that a message for Alec was delivered immediately. I did not think it necessary to tell Beverley what it was all about; I merely asked him to send word to the Airds that I wished to see them in Dinan to-morrow.