, that Musa's first
concert was postponed by the concert agency until the autumn. "I never
heard of that!" Audrey had cried. "And why should you have heard of it?
Have you not been in England?" Madame Piriac had answered, a little
surprised at Audrey's tone. Whereupon Audrey had said naught. The chief
point was that Musa could take a holiday without detriment to his career.
Moreover, Mr. Gilman, who possessed everything, possessed a marvellous
violin, which he would put at the disposal of Musa on the yacht if Musa's
own violin had not been found in the meantime. The official story was that
Musa's violin had been mislaid or lost on the Metropolitain Railway, and
the fact that he had been to England somehow did not transpire at all.

Mr. Gilman had gone forward in advance to make sure that his yacht was in a
state worthy to receive two such ladies, and he had insisted on meeting
them in his car at Abbeville on the way to Boulogne. He had not insisted on
meeting Musa similarly. He was a peculiar and in some respects a
stiff-necked man. He had decided, in his own mind, that he would have the
two women to himself in the car, and so indeed it fell out. Nevertheless
his attitude to Musa, and Madame Piriac's attitude to Musa, and everybody's
attitude to Musa, had shown that the mere prospect of star-concerts in a
first-class hall had very quickly transformed Musa into a genuine Parisian
lion. He was positively courted. His presence on the yacht was deemed an
honour, and that was why Mr. Gilman had asked him. Audrey both resented the
remarkable change and was proud of it--as a mother perhaps naturally would
do and be. The admitted genius was to arrive the next morning.

On boarding the _Ariadne_ in the wake of Mr. Gilman and Madame Piriac, the
first thing that impressed Audrey was the long gangway itself. It was made
of thin resilient steel, and the handrails were of soft white rope, almost
like silk, and finished off with fancy knots; and at the beginning of the
gangway, on the dirty quay, lay a beautiful mat bearing the name of the
goddess, while at the end, on the pale, smooth deck, was another similar
mat. The obvious costliness of that gangway and those superlative mats made
Audrey feel poor, in spite of her ten million francs. And the next thing
that impressed her was that immediately she got down on deck the yacht, in
a very mysterious manner, had grown larger, and much larger. At the forward
extremity of the deck certain