shops and with their irregular roofs boldly outlined above, while the
horizon suddenly became clear on the left as far as the blue slate
eaves of the Hotel de Ville, and on the right as far as the
leaden-hued dome of St. Paul. What startled her most of all, however,
was the hollow of the stream, the deep gap in which the Seine flowed,
black and turgid, from the heavy piles of the Pont Marie, to the light
arches of the new Pont Louis Philippe. Strange masses peopled the
river, a sleeping flotilla of small boats and yawls, a floating
washhouse, and a dredger moored to the quay. Then, farther down,
against the other bank, were lighters, laden with coals, and barges
full of mill stone, dominated as it were by the gigantic arm of a
steam crane. But, suddenly, everything disappeared again.

Claude had an instinctive distrust of women--that story of an
accident, of a belated train and a brutal cabman, seemed to him a
ridiculous invention. At the second thunder-clap the girl had shrunk
farther still into her corner, absolutely terrified.

'But you cannot stop here all night,' he said.

She sobbed still more and stammered, 'I beseech you, monsieur, take me
to Passy. That's where I was going.'

He shrugged his shoulders. Did she take him for a fool? Mechanically,
however, he turned towards the Quai des Celestins, where there was a
cabstand. Not the faintest glimmer of a lamp to be seen.

'To Passy, my dear? Why not to Versailles? Where do you think one can
pick up a cab at this time of night, and in such weather?'