But he perceived the Eiffel Tower still standing, and beside it a huge dome surmounted by a pin-point Colossus.

And he perceived, too, though he did not understand it at the time, a slanting drift of smoke.

The aeronaut said something about "trouble in the under-ways," that Graham did not heed.

But he marked the minarets and towers and slender masses that streamed skyward above the city wind-vanes, and knew that in the matter of grace at least Paris still kept in front of her larger rival.

And even as he looked a pale blue shape ascended very swiftly from the city like a dead leaf driving up before a gale.