“You have to try that new dress on, Winnie,” said Audrey rather reprovingly.

“Alone?  Me go alone there?  I wouldn’t do it.  It’s not respectable the way they look at you and add you up and question you in those trying-on rooms, when they’ve got you.”

“Well, take Elise with you.”

“Me take Elise?  I won’t do it, not unless I could keep her mouth full of pins all the time.  Whenever we’re alone, and her mouth isn’t full of pins, she always talks to me as if I was an actress.  And I’m not.”

“Well, then,” said Miss Nickall kindly, “come with me and Tommy.  We haven’t anything to do, and I’m taking Tommy to see Jane Foley.  Jane would love to see you.”

“She might,” replied Miss Ingate.  “Oh!  She might.  But I think I’ll walk across to the hotel and just go to bed and sleep it off.”

“Sleep what off?” asked Tommy, with necklace rattling and orchidaceous eyes glittering.

“Oh!  Everything!  Everything!” shrieked Miss Ingate.

There was one other customer left in the restaurant, a solitary fair, fat man, and as Mr. Gilman’s party was leaving, Audrey last, this solitary fair, fat man caught her eye, bowed, and rose.  It was Mr. Cowl, secretary of the National Reformation Society.  He greeted her with the assurance of an old and valued friend, and he called her neither Miss nor Mrs.; he called her nothing at all.  Audrey accepted his lead.

“And is your Society still alive?” she asked with casual polite disdain.

“Going strong!” said Mr. Cowl.  “More flourishing than ever—­in spite of our bad luck.”  He lifted his sandy-coloured eyebrows.  “Of course I’m here on Society business.  In fact, I often have to come to Paris on Society business.”  His glance deprecated the appearance of the table over which his rounded form was protruding.

“Well, I’m glad to have seen you again,” said Audrey, holding out her hand.

“I wonder,” said Mr. Cowl, drawing some tickets from his pocket.  “I wonder whether you—­and your friends—­would care to go to a concert to-night at the Salle Xavier.  The concierge at my hotel is giving tickets away, and I took some—­rather to oblige him than anything else.  For one never knows when a concierge may not be useful.  I don’t suppose it will be anything great, but it will pass the time, and—­er—­strangers in Paris——­”

“Thank you, Mr. Cowl, but I’m not a stranger in Paris.  I live here.”

“Oh!  I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Cowl.  “Excuse me.  Then you won’t take them?  Pity!  I hate to see anything wasted.”

Audrey was both desolated and infuriated.

“Remember me respectfully to Miss Ingate, please,” finished Mr. Cowl.  “She didn’t see me as she passed.”

He returned the tickets to his pocket.

Outside, Madame Piriac, standing by her automobile, which had rolled up with the silence of an hallucination, took leave of Audrey.