with you—God!” she would cry, throwing her head back with a sudden rich burst of laughter—“look at the old boy with the whiskers over there at the table—did you see him twirl his gay moustachios and roll his roguish eyes at that girl as she went by? Simply incredible!” she cried with another laugh, and bit her lips, and shook her head in fine astonishment. “Thank you!” she murmured politely, as the gendarme shrilled upon his whistle and beckoned with his small white club. “Monsieur l’Agent, vous êtes bien gentil”—as she smoothly shifted gears and shot past him.
In this wonderful and intoxicating way all of Paris defiled past them like a great glittering toy, a splendid map of rich, luxurious shops and great cafés, an animated and beautiful design of a million gay and fascinating people, all bent on pleasure, all filled with joy, all with something so vivid, bright, particular and incomparable about them that the whole vast pattern resolved itself into a thousand charming and brilliant pictures, each wonderful and unforgettable, and all fitting instantly into the single structure, the simple and magnificent clarity of the whole design.
They swept through the huge central web of Paris, and were passing through the great shabby complication of the Eastern Quarters, the ragged, ugly sprawl of the suburbs.
And now, swift as dreams, it seemed, they were out in open country, speeding along roads shaded by tall rows of poplars, under a sky of humid grey, whitened with a milky and soul-troubling light.
Elinor was very gay, mercurial, full of sudden spontaneous laughter, snatches of song, deep gravity, swift inexplicable delight. Ann maintained a sullen silence. As for Starwick, he seemed on the verge of collapse all the time. At Château-Thierry he announced that he could go no farther: they stopped, got him into a little café, and fortified him with some brandy. He sank into a stupor of exhaustion, from which they could not rouse him. To all their persuasions and entreaties he just shook his head and mumbled wearily:
“I can’t!—Leave me here!—I can’t go on!”
Three hours passed in this way before they succeeded in reviving him, getting him out of the café—or estaminet—and into the car again. Ann’s face was flushed with resentful anger. She burst out furiously:
“You had no right to make him come along on this trip! You knew he couldn’t make it; he’s dead on his feet. I think we ought to take him back to Paris now.”
