pointed, and saw in the doorway of the custom-house two women and a lad,
all cloaked but all obviously in radiant fancy dress, laughing together.

"Don't they look French!" said Miss Ingate.

Audrey tapped her foot on the asphalt floor, while people whose luggage had
been examined bumped strenuously against her in the effort to depart. She
was extremely pessimistic; she knew she could do nothing with Miss Ingate;
and the thought of the vast, flaring, rumbling city beyond the station
intimidated her. The _porteur_, who had gone away to collect their
neglected small baggage, now returned, and nudged her, pointing to the
official who had resumed his place behind the trunks. He was certainly a
fierce man, but he was a little man, and there was an agreeable peculiarity
in his eye.

Audrey, suddenly inspired and emboldened, faced him; she shrugged her
shoulders Gallically at Miss Ingate's trunk, and gave a sad, sweet, wistful
smile, and then put her hand with an exquisite inviting gesture on the
smallest of her own trunks. The act was a deliberate exploitation of
widowhood. The official fiercely shrugged his shoulders and threw up his
arms, and told the _porteur_ to open the small trunk.

"I told you they would," said Miss Ingate negligently.

Audrey would have turned upon her and slain her had she not been busy with
the tremendous realisation of the fact that by a glance and a gesture she
had conquered the customs official--a foreigner and a stranger. She wanted
to be alone and to think.

Just as the trunk was being relocked, Audrey heard an American girlish