ommonplace. Rain was coming
down in torrents and beating against the newspaper kiosk over the way,
on the roofs of tramways and taxi-autos, making the electric light
peep dimly through the veil of wet, drowning, by its incessant patter,
to which the gusts of a November gale made fitful if loud
accompaniment, the shouts of the _cochers_ on their boxes, the rattle
of wheels on the stone pavement, even at times the shrill whistle for
cabs emanating from the porch of the brilliantly lighted Palace Hotel.

It was close on half-past six by the clock of the Gare du Nord
opposite. The express from Ostend had just come in--very late of
course, owing to the gale which had delayed the mail boat. Louisa,
straining her eyes, watched the excited crowd pouring out of the
station in the wake of porters and of piles of luggage, jabbering,
shouting, and fussing like an army of irresponsible pigmies: men in
blouses, and men in immaculate bowler hats, women wrapped in furs,
clinging to gigantic headgear that threatened to leave the safe refuge
of an elaborate coiffure or of well fixed gargantuan hatpins,
midinettes in fashionable skirts and high-heeled shoes, country women
in wool shawls that flapped round their bulky forms like the wings of
an overfed bat, all hurrying and jostling one another in a mad
endeavour to avoid the onrush of the innumerable taxi-autos which in
uncountable numbers wound in and out of the slower moving traffic like
the erratic thread of some living, tangled skein.

Just the every-day prosy life of a small but ambitious capital
struggling in the midst of an almost overpowering sense of
responsibility toward the whole of Europe in view of its recent great
Colonial expansion.

Louisa gave an impatient sigh.

Even the strong ones of the earth get wearied of the daily round, the
common task at times. She and aunt were due to dine at the British
Embassy at eight o'clock; it was only half-past six now and obviously
impossible to sit another two hours in this unresponsive hotel room in
the company of red velvet chairs and the bronze Psyche.

Aunt, in conjunction with her maid Annette, was busy laying the
foundations of an elaborate toilette. Louisa was free to do as she
pleased. She got a serviceable ulster and a diminutive hat and sallied
forth into the streets. She did not want to think or to dream, nor
perhaps did she altogether wish to work off that unusual feeling of
excitement which had so unaccountably transf