Beyond the platforms there were droves of people, of whom nearly every
individual was preoccupied and hurried. And what people! Audrey had in her
heart expected a sort of glittering white terminus full of dandiacal men
and elegant Parisiennes who had stepped straight out of fashion-plates, and
who had no cares--for was not this Paris? Whereas, in fact, the multitude
was the dingiest she had ever seen. Not a gleam of elegance! No hint of
dazzling colour! No smiling and satiric beauty! They were just persons.

At last, after formalities, Audrey and Miss Ingate reached the foul and
chilly custom-house appointed for the examination of luggage.
Unrecognisable peers and other highnesses stood waiting at long counters,
forming bays, on which was nothing at all. Then, far behind, a truck hugely
piled with trunks rolled in through a back door and men pitched the trunks
like toys here and there on the counters, and officials came into view, and
knots of travellers gathered round trunks, and locks were turned and lids
were lifted, and the flash of linen showed in spots on the drabness of the
scene. Miss Ingate observed with horror the complete undoing of a lady's
large trunk, and the exposure to the world's harsh gaze of the most
intimate possessions of that lady. Soon the counters were like a fair. But
no trunk belonging to Audrey or to Miss Ingate was visible. They knew then,
what they had both privately suspected ever since Charing Cross, that their
trunks would be lost on the journey.

"Oh! My trunk!" cried Miss Ingate.

Beneath a pile of other trunks on an incoming truck she had espied her
property. Audrey saw it, too. The vision was magical. The trunk seemed like
a piece of home, a bit of Moze and of England. It drew affection from them
as though it had been an animal. They sped towards it, forgetting their
small baggage. Their _porteur_ leaped over the counter from behind and made