d.

Mr. Gilman and the two girls made a group.

"You're wonderful! You really are!" said Mr. Gilman, addressing apparently
the pair of them. He was enthusiastic. ... He added with grandeur, "And
now for France!"

"I do hope Mr. Hurley is still hanging about Moze," said Audrey. "Mr.
Gilman, shall I show Miss Foley her cabin? She's rather wet."

"Oh, do! Oh, do, please! But don't forget that we are to have supper
together. I insist on supper."

And Audrey thought: "How agreeable he is! How kind-hearted! He hasn't got
any 'career' to worry about, and I adore him, and he's as simple as
knitting."

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE IMMINENT DRIVE

"Oh!" cried Miss Thompkins. "You can see it from here. It's funny how
unreal it seems, isn't it?"

She pointed at one of the large white-curtained windows of the restaurant,
through which was visible a round column covered with advertisements of
theatres, music-halls, and concert-halls, printed in many colours and
announcing superlative delights. Names famous wherever pleasure is
understood gave to their variegated posters a pleasant air of distinguished
familiarity--names of theatres such as "Varietes," "Vaudeville,"
"Chatelet," "Theatre Francais," "Folies-Bergere," and names of persons such
as "Sarah Bernhardt," "Huegenet," "Le Bargy," "Litvinne," "Lavalliere." But
the name in the largest type--dark crimson letters on rose paper--the name
dominating all the rest, was the name of Musa. The ingenuous stranger to
Paris was compelled to think that as an artist Musa was far more important
than anybody else. Along the length of all the principal boulevards, and in
many of the lesser streets, the ingenuous stranger encountered, at regular
distances of a couple of hundred yards or so, one of these columns planted
on the kerb; and all the scores of them bore exactly the same legend; they
all spoke of nothing but blissful diversions, and they all put Musa ahead
of anybody else in the world of the stage and the platform. Sarah Bernhardt
herself, dark blue upon pale, was a trifle compared to Musa on the columns.
And it had been so for days. Other posters were changed daily--changed by
mysterious hands before even bread-girls were afoot with their yards of
bread--but the space given to Musa repeated always the same tidings, namely
that Musa ("the great violinist") was to give an orchestral concert at the
Salle Xavier, assisted by the Xavier orchestra, on Thursday, September 24,
at 9 P.M.