uaintances, 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-hear