Alone in their taxi-mÈtre, Stainton and Muriel preserved for some time an awkward silence. Jim was waiting for some hint from her to indicate what would be his safest course. His wife sat rigid, her fists clenched in her lap.

"That doctor is a strange type," said Stainton at last.

"Horrid man! He's a horrid man!" gasped Muriel.

"Well, of course," said Stainton, seeking to steer her into the quiescence of a judicial attitude, "he is all wrong in his conclusions——"

"He picked his teeth," said Muriel.

Jim had preserved his own good manners to the age of fifty, but his years in mining-camps had blunted his observation of the lack of nicety in others.

"Did he?" asked Jim.

"Didn't you see him? He carries a gold toothpick around with him. I believe he was proud of it. It's—that's what made me sick."

"Then," enquired Jim, growing uncomfortable, "it wasn't what he said?"

"Said? You both sat up there and quarrelled——"

"We didn't quarrel. The doctor has what seems to be the national manner, but we were merely discussing——"

"You were discussing me!" said Muriel. "I thought I should die. I don't know how I bore it; I——"

Jim slipped his arm around her waist. "My dear, my dear, how could you think such a thing? We were talking about a general subject. We were——Why, we didn't say anything that could possibly affect you."

"I don't care," Muriel declared: "everything that he said—that man—was awful."

"It was," admitted Stainton, glad that the burden of offence had again been shifted to Boussingault's shoulders. "It was, rather. I didn't know whether you were paying attention to it at all. To some of it I hoped you weren't."

"Nobody could help hearing such shouting. I was so afraid there might be some English or Americans there."

"Still, you didn't appear to hear,"—Stainton spoke with relief at thought of this,—"so it was as well as it could be."

"I must have shown it, Jim. I thought my face would burn away."

"At any rate, you didn't talk."

"How could I?"

Stainton was silent for a few seconds. Then he asked:

"What did you mean by your question?"

Muriel took some time to reply:

"What question?"

"You know: the only one you asked—about—about children not being wanted?"

This time Muriel's answer was swift: she took her husband's broad shoulders in her arms and, as they rolled down the boulevard, began sobbing.

"I never want to see him again!" she vowed. "Never bring him to the hotel. I won't be at home if he comes. I won't see him. I won't!"

She suggested changing their hotel. She declared that, even if they did change, she could not sleep that night. She begged him to take her somewhere to amuse her and get her thoughts away from the dreadful Boussingault.

It was Stainton who proposed that they should see Montmartre—which term, when used by the travelling American, means to see two or three places in Montmartre conducted largely for Americans, which charge in strict accord with the French ideas of the average American's pocketbook, and are visible only between the hours of ten o'clock at night and four o'clock in the morning.

"Very well," said Jim; "we might go to Montmartre. I think we ought to see Montmartre."

"What's that?" asked Muriel.

"It's—oh, it's a part of Paris. You'll know when we get there."

"I don't remember hearing of it in our French course."

"I don't think it's included in the French course of a convent. I hope not."

"Why not?"

"For the very reason that we ought to go see it—now."

He was quite sure that he was sincere in his attitude. They were sightseers, and he had always been told that Montmartre was one of the sights of Paris. They had seen everything else. They had seen Notre Dame, the Sainte Chapelle, the markets, the Palais de Justice, the Chambre des DÉputÉs, the tomb of Napoleon—everything. They had enjoyed the Jardins des Tuileries and the pictures and sculpture of the Luxembourg Museum, and they had walked through the weary miles of painted canvases in the Louvre, where Muriel lingered before the spot at which the Mona Lisa had long hung. They had even permitted themselves the horrors of the Morgue. Why should Stainton not complete his knowledge of Paris, and why should he not, like most other Americans, take his wife, however young she was, to Montmartre with him? Jim had once said to Holt that he had, all his life long, kept himself clean. The curiosities of his youth had remained unsatisfied.

The strongest impulses are not infrequently those of which one is entirely unconscious. At Aiken, Stainton had yielded himself with the extravagance of the young man of twenty-five, which he thought he was, to the demands of the situation in which he found himself. At sea there had necessarily been a quieter period; but this had ended with the arrival of the Staintons in Paris. The tension of sightseeing had, alone, sufficed to wear them out, and now (though he persuaded himself that this was but the inevitable development of the novel into the commonplace) he began to fear that the high tide of his emotion might be sinking to the low level of habit and affection, that what was true of himself was also true of Muriel, and he drew the inference that another sort of sightseeing would be good for them both.

So they went to Montmartre.

At the advice of their chauffeur, they commenced with the Bal Tabarin. From the motor-car that had hauled them up the long hills of dark and tortuous streets, they stepped into a blaze of yellow light, under which half a dozen men hurried to them. One held the door of the cab; another, as if it were his sole business in life, wielded a folded newspaper as a shield to protect Muriel's gown from contamination by the motor's muddy tires; two pointed to the scintillating doorway, and two more chattered enquiries that Jim could in no wise interpret.

He knew, however, that there was one answer to every question: he doled out a handful of francs, in true American fashion, and then handed a purple and white bill to his wife.

Curiously text-book French though it was, Muriel's French had proved really intelligible; she had rapidly acquired the power of comprehending a full third of the French addressed to her, and all this struck Stainton, who loved to follow the lips that were his, speaking a language that was not his and of which he was nearly ignorant, as a proof of her superiority. Therefore she now preceded him to the ticket window and made their purchase. A moment later a large man in a frock coat was ushering them, among capped and aproned maids that begged permission to check wraps, up to the double stairway at the end of the big ballroom and into a box twenty feet above the floor.

They sat down, conscious of themselves, and ordered a bottle of Ayala, presently served to them in goblets to play the rÔle of wine-glasses—for one drinks champagne from goblets in Montmartre—and looked down at the dancers on the floor below. From its balcony at the other end of the hall a brass band was sending forth a whirlwind of quadrille music, and in the centre of the ballroom eight women danced the can-can. They were large women, some of them rather fat, and none of them rather young. They wore wide straw hats and simple tailored shirtwaists and dark skirts of a cut almost severe; but in sharp contrast to this exterior, when they danced, they displayed incredible yards and yards of lace petticoat and stockings that outshone the rainbow.

"What do you think of it?" asked Stainton.

Muriel condemned the Bal Tabarin as she had condemned Boussingault.

"I think it's horrid," she replied. "Aren't they ugly?" But she did not take her eyes from the dancers.

All about the dancing-floor, except in that large circular clearing for the performers, were little tables where men and women sat and drank beer and smoked cigarettes. Along one side was a long bar at which both sexes were served. Everyone gave casual heed to the dancing; everyone applauded when he was pleased and hissed when he was not. Now and then a young woman would rush to a neighbouring table, seize upon a man and guide him madly about one corner of the floor in time to the music, and now and then it would be a young man that seized upon a woman, at which the patrons, if they paid any attention at all to it, smiled good-naturedly. At one of the most conspicuous tables were a couple kissing above their foaming beer-mugs, and nobody seemed to notice them. Clearly, this was a world where one did as one pleased, and, so long as one did not trespass upon the individuality of another, none objected.

"Something new, isn't it?" asked Jim, rather dubiously.

"It's unbelievable," said Muriel, her face flushed.

"Shall we go?"

"No—we might as well wait a little while—until we've finished our champagne."

The quadrille ended. There were ten minutes during which the visitors to the place waltzed rapidly, with feet lifting high, about the floor. Down the centre two young girls were swaying together in a form of waltzing that neither of the Americans had ever seen before. A man and a woman, dancing, would embrace violently at every recurrence of a certain refrain.

Muriel slipped her hand along the rail of the box. Stainton, whose eyes were fixed on the dancers, started at her touch.

"Hold my hand," said Muriel.

He took her hand in his, lowering it from the view of the spectators.

"No," commanded Muriel: "on the rail, please."

"Certainly, but isn't that rather——"

"It seems to be the custom, Jim."

So he held her hand before them all, and soon found himself liking this.

A troupe of girls ran upon the floor and, to the music, began a performance in tumbling. The hair of one was loosened, the ribbon that held it fell at her slippered feet, and two men, from near-by tables, leaped upon it and struggled laughingly for possession of the trophy.

The Staintons were intent upon this when they heard a low laugh behind them. They looked about: three women with bright cheeks were peeping through the swinging doors of the box. Involuntarily, Jim smiled, and, since a smile in Montmartre passes current for an invitation, the foremost of the girls entered, shutting out her companions.

"Vous Êtes AmÉricains?" she enquired.

Stainton's French went as far as that. He nodded.

"Du nord ou du sud?"

Jim was accustomed to thinking that there was but one real America.

"The United States," said he.

"Ver' well," laughed the girl in an English prettily accented. "Your good 'ealth, sar—and the good 'ealth of mademoiselle."

She raised from the table Jim's goblet of champagne and drank a little. It was evident that her English was now exhausted.

Jim, frankly puzzled, looked at Muriel.

"What shall we do?" he wondered.

He thought that Muriel would resent the intrusion, but Muriel did not seem to resent it.

"It appears to be the custom," said Muriel again. "I suppose that we had better ask her to sit down and have some champagne."

"Very well," said Stainton, none too willingly. "You ask her, then: the French verb 'to sit' always was too much for me."

Muriel offered the invitation; the visitor laughingly accepted; another bottle was ordered and, while Jim, unable to understand what was being said, leaned over the rail and looked at the dancers, his wife and the vermilion-lipped intruder engaged in an encounter of small-talk that Muriel began by enjoying as an improvement at once of her French and her knowledge of the world.

The visitor, however, so managed the conversation that, though she did give Muriel her address in a little street off the Boulevard Clichy, it was she who was gathering information. She was extremely polite, but extremely inquisitive.

"You have been long in Paris, is it not?" she asked.

"No, not long; only two weeks," said Muriel.

"But in France—no?"

"We came direct to Paris."

"But you speak French well, mademoiselle."

The compliment pleased Muriel to the extent that she missed the title applied to her.

"My knowledge of French is very small," she replied. "I studied the language in America."

"In America? Truly? One would never suppose."

"We had a French nun for teacher."

"Yes, yes. And monsieur your sweetheart, he does not speak French—no?"

Muriel started.

"Monsieur," she said, a little stiffly, "is my husband."

But the visitor, far from feeling reprimanded, was openly delighted.

"Your husband?" she echoed. "Very good. He is handsome, your husband."

"I think so," said Muriel.

"And it is always good," pursued the guest, "that the husband be much older than the wife, is it not?"

Instantly Muriel relapsed. She could not know that the girl spoke sincerely. She was among strangers, and, like most of us, instinctively suspected all whose native tongue was not her own.

"He is not much older!" she retorted.

"Oh—but yes. And it is well. It is so that it is most often arranged in France."

"No doubt—but our marriages are not 'arranged' for us in America. We choose for ourselves."

The visitor seemed surprised. She raised her long, high brows and looked from Stainton to Muriel.

"How then," she enquired, "you choose for yourself a man so much older?"

"I say he is not much older, not any older," said Muriel, despising herself for having fallen into such a discussion, yet unable, in an alien language, to disentangle herself.

"But madame is a mere girl," said the visitor, seeking only to be polite.

"And my husband is young also," declared Muriel.

Something in the tone of this repetition convinced the French girl that the subject was not further to be pursued. She essayed another tack.

"And the babies?" she asked. "Is it that you brought with you the babies?"

Muriel's cheeks warmed again, and she looked away.

"We have no children," she responded, shortly.

"No children?" The visitor plainly considered this unbelievable. "You have no little babies? Then, why to marry?"

"No."

"Not one?"

"We have none."

"But how unhappy, how unfortunate for monsieur! Perhaps soon——"

"We have been married only a short time."

"Ah!" The French girl seemed to rest upon that as the sole reasonable explanation. "Then," she said with a note of encouragement in her tone, "it is not without hope. After a while you will have the babies."

Muriel was angry. She looked to Jim for rescue; but Jim was still leaning over the rail, engrossed in the spectacle presented by the dancers.

"I do not want any children," said Muriel, suddenly.

"No children? You wish no children?" gasped her inquisitor. "You choose to marry, and yet you want no children? But why then did madame marry?"

Muriel rose.

"For reasons that you cannot understand," she said. "We must go now," she added; and she touched Jim's arm. "Come," she said to him; "let's go, Jim."

Stainton turned slowly.

"What's the hurry?" he asked.

"It must be after one o'clock," said Muriel.

"But we are in Montmartre."

"Yes—and we have still a great deal of it to see before daylight, I believe."

Jim rose.

"All right," he said.

The girl put out her hand.

"S'il vous plaÎt, monsieur," she said: "la petite monnaie."

Stainton had tried to take the extended hand to bid its owner good-night, but he noticed, before she began to speak, that it was turned palm upward.

"What's this?" he enquired of Muriel.

"My cab-fare," said the visitor in French, and Muriel, vaguely appreciating the fact that here was another custom of the country, translated.

"Give her a five-franc piece," she said. "Something of the sort is evidently expected."

"So I have to pay her for the privilege of buying her champagne?" laughed Jim. "Ask her what I am paying for. I am curious about this."

"No," said Muriel.

"Do," urged Stainton.

But the girl appeared now to comprehend. She was not embarrassed.

"In brief," she explained, "for my time."

"You pay her," Muriel grudgingly translated, "for her time. But," she concluded, "I wouldn't pay her much, Jim."

"So that's it!" chuckled Stainton. "Oh, well, I don't want to seem stingy after all this discussion of it."

He handed her a ten-franc louis.

The girl's eyes caught the unexpected glint of gold.

"Oh, la-la-la!" she gurgled, and, with what seemed one movement, she pocketed the money; drank to Jim's health; flung her arms about him with a sounding kiss on his mouth, and ran giggling through the folding-doors.

Stainton, tingling with a strange excitement and looking decidedly foolish, gazed at his wife.

"What do you think of that?" he choked.

Muriel stood before him trembling, her black eyes ablaze.

"How dared you?" she demanded.

"I?" Jim was still bewildered. "What on earth did I do?"

"And before my very eyes!" said Muriel.

"But, my dear, I didn't do anything. It was the girl——"

"You permitted it."

"I hadn't time to forbid. Besides, it would have been absurd to forbid. And she meant it as a compliment."

"Not to you. Don't flatter yourself, Jim."

"Well, at any rate, my dear, it is merely another custom of the quarter that we are in. Really, I scarcely think you should object."

"It was the money that she liked, Jim. I think that, as for you, you couldn't have been more absurd even if you had forbidden her."

He quieted her as best he could. They would go, he said, to L'Abbaye, of which their chauffeur had spoken to them; and to L'Abbaye, that most gilded and most brilliant of all the night palaces of Montmartre, they went.

They climbed the crowded stairs and paused for a moment in the doorway, while Jim began to divest himself of his overcoat. Muriel, ahead, was looking into the elaborate room.

Pale green and white it was and loud with laughter and music, with the popping of many corks and the chatter of persons that seemed to have no mission there save the common mission of enjoyment. In the centre was a cleared space, and there, among handsomely appointed tables, the white waistcoated men and radiantly-gowned women loudly applauding, two Spanish girls in bright costumes were dancing the sensuous mattchiche.

Muriel saw that, at one of the tables nearest the dancers, was a young man who applauded more enthusiastically than any of his neighbours. She saw that the girls observed this and liked it. She saw one girl, with an especially violent embrace, seize her partner, hold her tight for an instant, release her, and then, dashing to the young man, extend her arms, to which the young man sprang amid the tolerant laughter of his companions. Muriel saw the Spanish girl and the young man continue the dance.

Quickly she wheeled to her husband.

"I don't want to go in here," she said.

"What?" Jim was utterly dumfounded.

She caught the lapels of his coat and held him, with his back to the room, in the position that he had thus far maintained.

"I say that I don't want to go in. Take me away. Here, these are the stairs. I'm tired. It's vulgar. I'm not well."

She released her hold of him and started to descend alone. He was forced to follow with hardly the chance to get his coat and hat.

In the motor-car she grasped his face in her hot hands and fell, between sobs, to kissing him.

"I love you!—I love you!" she cried.

The young man with the Spanish dancer was Franz von Klausen.