air. I did not occupy it, as it happened. A meagre, very tall Alsatian
was holding the door open for the exit of my sister. He said nothing at
all, but stood slightly inclined as she passed him. I caught a glimpse
of a red, long face, very tired eyes, and hair of almost startling
whiteness--the white hair of a comparatively young man, without any
lustre of any sort--a dead white, like that of snow. I remember that
white hair with a feeling of horror, whilst I have almost forgotten the
features of the great Baron de Halderschrodt.

I had still some of the feeling of having been in contact with a
personality of the most colossal significance as we went down the red
carpet of the broad white marble stairs. With one foot on the lowest
step, the figure of a perfectly clothed, perfectly groomed man was
standing looking upward at our descent. I had thought so little of him
that the sight of the Duc de Mersch's face hardly suggested any train of
emotions. It lit up with an expression of pleasure.

"You," he said.

She stood looking down upon him from the altitude of two steps, looking
with intolerable passivity.

"So you use the common stairs," she said, "one had the idea that you
communicated with these people through a private door." He laughed
uneasily, looking askance at me.

"Oh, I ..." he said.

She moved a little to one side to pass him in her descent.

"So things have arranged themselves--_la bas_," she said, referring, I
supposed, to the elective grand duchy.

"Oh, it was like a miracle," he answered, "and I owed a great deal--a
great deal--to your hints...."

"You must tell me all about it to-night," she said.

De Mersch's face had an extraordinary quality that I seemed to notice in
all the faces around me--a quality of the flesh that seemed to lose all
luminosity, of the eyes that seemed forever to have a tendency to seek
the ground, to avoid the sight of the world. When he brightened to
answer her it was as if with effort. It seemed as if a weight were on
the mind of the whole world--a preoccupation that I shared without
understanding. She herself, a certain absent-mindedness apart, seemed
the only one that was entirely unaffected.

As we sat side by side in the little carriage, she said suddenly:

"They are coming to the end of their tether, you see." I shrank away
from her a little--but I did not see and did not want to see. I said so.
It even seemed to me that de Mersch having got over the troubles