boulevard, trotting evenly at its steady pace, head down, the little
bell at its neck jingling pleasantly as it went. It occurs to me that
the white horse was probably unique. I doubt that there was another
horse in Paris rejoicing in that extraordinary name.

But the two young men walked slowly on across the Pont de la Concorde.
They went in silence, for Hartley was thinking still of Miss Helen
Benham, and Ste. Marie was thinking of Heaven knows what. His gloom was
unaccountable unless he had really meant what he said about feeling
calamity in the air. It was very unlike him to have nothing to say.
Midway of the bridge he stopped and turned to look out over the river,
and the other man halted beside him. The dusk was thickening almost
perceptibly, but it was yet far from dark. The swift river ran leaden
beneath them, and the river boats, mouches and hirondelles, darted
silently under the arches of the bridge, making their last trips for the
day. Away to the west, where their faces were turned, the sky was still
faintly washed with color, lemon and dusky orange and pale thin green. A
single long strip of cirrus cloud was touched with pink, a lifeless old
rose, such as is popular among decorators for the silk hangings of a
woman's boudoir. And black against this pallid wash of colors the tour
Eiffel stood high and slender and rather ghostly. By day it is an ugly
thing, a preposterous iron finger upthrust by man's vanity against God's
serene sky; but the haze of evening drapes it in a merciful
semi-obscurity and it is beautiful.

Ste. Marie leaned upon the parapet of the bridge, arms folded before him
and eyes afar. He began to sing, a demi-voix, a little phrase out of
_Louise_--an invocation to Paris--and the Englishman stirred uneasily
beside him. It seemed to Hartley that to stand on a bridge, in a top-hat
and evening clothes, and sing operatic airs while people passed back and
forth behind you, was one of the things that are not done. He tried to
imagine himself singing in the middle of Westminster Bridge at half-past
eight of an evening, and he felt quite hot all over at the thought. It
was not done at all, he said to himself. He looked a little nervously at
the people who were passing, and it seemed to him that they stared at
him and at the unconscious Ste. Marie, though in truth they did nothing
of the sort. He turned back and touched his friend on the arm, saying:

"I think we'd best be getting along, you know."