box--'

Claude burst out laughing. He no longer doubted. She could not have
invented that driver. And as she suddenly stopped, somewhat confused,
he said, 'All right, the cabman was having a joke.'

'I jumped out at once by the other door,' resumed Christine. 'Then he
began to swear at me, saying that we had arrived at Passy, and that he
would tear my hat from my head if I did not pay him. It was raining in
torrents, and the quay was absolutely deserted. I was losing my head,
and when I had pulled out a five-franc piece, he whipped up his horse
and drove off, taking my little bag, which luckily only contained two
pocket-handkerchiefs, a bit of cake, and the key of my trunk, which I
had been obliged to leave behind in the train.'

'But you ought to have taken his number,' exclaimed the artist
indignantly. In fact he now remembered having been brushed against by
a passing cab, which had rattled by furiously while he was crossing
the Pont Louis Philippe, amid the downpour of the storm. And he
reflected how improbable truth often was. The story he had conjured up
as being the most simple and logical was utterly stupid beside the
natural chain of life's many combinations.

'You may imagine how I felt under the doorway,' concluded Christine.
'I knew well enough that I was not at Passy, and that I should have to
spend the night there, in this terrible Paris. And there was the
thunder and the lightning--those horrible blue and red flashes, which
showed me things that made me tremble.'

She closed her eyelids once more, she shivered, and the colour left