otel, it's all right, too; but in
the Pavilion, for instance, I wouldn't leave Madame by herself, not for
half an hour."

"What is there in the Pavilion?" I asked.

"It's a sort of feeling I have," she murmured reluctantly . . . "Oh!
There's that _coupe_ going away."

She made a movement towards the window but checked herself. I hadn't
moved. The rattle of wheels on the cobble-stones died out almost at
once.

"Will Monsieur write an answer?" Rose suggested after a short silence.

"Hardly worth while," I said. "I will be there very soon after you.
Meantime, please tell Madame from me that I am not anxious to see any
more tears. Tell her this just like that, you understand. I will take
the risk of not being received."

She dropped her eyes, said: "_Oui_, Monsieur," and at my suggestion
waited, holding the door of the room half open, till I went downstairs to
see the road clear.

It was a kind of deaf-and-dumb house. The black-and-white hall was empty
and everything was perfectly still. Blunt himself had no doubt gone away
with his mother in the brougham, but as to the others, the dancing girls,
Therese, or anybody else that its walls may have contained, they might
have been all murdering each other in perfect assurance that the house
would not betray them by indulging in any unseemly murmurs. I emitted a
low whistle which didn't seem to travel in that peculiar atmosphere more
than two feet away from my lips, but all the same Rose came tripping down
the stairs at once. With just a nod to my whisper: "Take a fiacre," she
glided out and I shut the door noiselessly behind her.

The next time I saw her she was opening the door of the house on the
Prado to me, with her cap and the little black silk apron on, and with
that marked personality of her own, which had been concealed so perfectly
in the dowdy walking dress, very much to the fore.

"I have given Madame the message," she said in her contained voice,
swinging the door wide open. Then after relieving me of my hat and coat
she announced me with the simple words: "_Voila_ Monsieur," and hurried
away. Directly I appeared Dona Rita, away there on the couch, passed the
tips of her fingers over her eyes and holding her hands up palms outwards
on each side of her head, shouted to me down the whole length of the
room: "The dry season has set in." I glanced at the pink tips of her
fingers perfunctorily and then drew back. She let her hands fall
negligently