his native heath or duckpond; so,
naturally, he followed in a taxi-motor, whose turbulent,
goodness-knows-what-horse-power had to be subdued to one-half-horse
gait. I didn't look behind, but I felt in my bones--my funny bones--that
he was there. And when I arrived at the Gare de Lyon so did he.

The train I'd come to meet was a P. and O. Special, or whatever you call
it, and it wasn't in yet, so I had to wait.

"Cats may look at kings," said my gay cavalier.

"Cads mayn't though," said I. Perhaps I ought to have maintained a
dignified silence, but that _mot_ was irresistible.

"You _are_ hard on a chap," said he. "I tell you what. I've been
thinking a lot about you, mademoiselle, and I believe you're up to some
little game of your own. When the cat's away the mice will play. You've
got rid of your friend, and you're out for a lark on your own. What?"

Oh, wouldn't I have loved to box his ears! But this time I was dignified
and turned my back on him. Luckily, the train came puffing into the
station, and he ceased to bother me actively, for the time; but the
worst is to follow.

Now I think I've got to the part of my story where the Dragon ought to
appear.

Suddenly, as the train stopped, that platform of a Paris railway station
was turned into a thoroughly English scene. A wave from Great Britain
swept over it, a tall and tweedy wave, bearing with it golf clubs and
kitbags and every kind of English flotsam and jetsam. All the passengers
had lately landed from the foreignest of foreign parts, coral strands,
and that sort of remote thing, but they looked as incorruptibly,
triumphantly British, every man, woman, and child of them (except a
fringe of black or brown servants), as if they had strolled over from
across Channel for a Saturday to Monday in "gay Paree." One can't help
admiring as well as wondering at that sort of ineradicable, persistent
Britishness, can one? I believe it's partly the secret of Great
Britain's success in colonizing. Her people are so calmly sure of their
superiority over all other races that the other races end by believing
it, and trying to imitate their ways, instead of fighting to maintain
the right to their own.

That feeling came over me as I, a mere French and American chit, stood
aside to let the wave flow on. Everyone looked so important, and unaware
of the existence of foreigners, except porters, that I was afraid my
particular drop of the wave might sail by on the crest, without