Never before had Audrey heard anybody connect himself with posterity, and she was very much impressed.  Monsieur Dauphin was resigned and yet brave.  By no means convinced that posterity would do the right thing, he nevertheless had no grudge against posterity.

Just then there was a sharp scream at the top of the spiral staircase.  With a smile that condoned the scream and excused his flight, Monsieur Dauphin ran to the staircase, and up it, and disappeared on to the roof.  Nobody seemed to be perturbed.  Audrey was left alone and conspicuous on the dais.

“Charming, isn’t he?” said Miss Thompkins, arriving with Miss Ingate in front of the flower-screened platform.

“Oh! he is!” answered Audrey with sincerity, leaning downwards.

“Has he told you all about the Russian princesses?”

“Oh, yes,” said Audrey, pleased.

“I thought he would,” said Miss Thompkins, with a peculiar intonation.

Audrey knew then that Miss Thompkins, having first maliciously made sure that she was a ninny, was now telling her to her face that she was a ninny.

Tommy continued: 

“Then I guess he told you he’d given Musa to the world.”

Audrey nodded.

“Ah!  I knew he would.  Well, when he comes back he’ll tell you that you must come to one of his real entertainments here, and that this one is nothing.  Then he’ll tell you about all the nobs he knows in London.  And at last he’ll say that you have a strangely expressive face, and he’d like to paint it and show the picture in the Salon.  But he won’t tell you it’ll cost you forty thousand francs.  So I’ll tell you that, because perhaps later on, if you don’t know, you might find yourself making a noise like a tenderfoot.  You see, Miss Ingate hasn’t concealed that you’re a lady millionaire.”

“No, I haven’t,” said Miss Ingate, glowing and yet sarcastic.  “I couldn’t bring myself to, because I was so anxious to see if human nature in Paris is anything like what it is in Essex.”

“And why should you hide it, Winnie?” Audrey stoutly demanded.

“Well, au revoir,” Tommy murmured delicately, with a very original gesture.  “He’s coming back.”

As Monsieur Dauphin, having apparently established peace on the roof, approached again, Audrey discreetly examined his face and his demeanour, to see if she could perceive in him any of the sinister things that Tommy had implied.  She was unable to make up her mind whether she could or not.  But in the end she decided that she was as shrewd as anybody in the place.

“Have you been to my roof-garden, Mrs. Moncreiff?” he asked in a persuasive voice, raising his eyebrows.

She said she had, and that she thought the roof was heavenly.

Then from the corner of her eye she saw Miss Ingate and Tommy sidling mischievously away, like conspirators who have lighted a time fuse.  She considered that Tommy, with her red hair and freckles, and strange glances and strange tones full of a naughty and malicious sweetness, was even more peculiar than Miss Ingate.  But she was not intimidated by them nor by the illustrious Monsieur Dauphin, so perfectly master of his faculties.  Rather she was exultant in the contagion of their malice.  Once more she felt as if she had ceased to be a girl a very long time ago.  And she was aware of agreeable and exciting temptations.