woman, a dry crackling
laugh, which she thought innocent perhaps, but which caressed her whole
being, a burst of laughter, which, made up of formless instinctive
cries, was almost fleshy. She stopped and turned, silent again. And
the speaker, sure of his effect, continued in a calm voice to hurl upon
these people the story of the monster's confession.

A young mother, whose daughter was sitting beside her, half got up, but
could not leave. She sat down again and bent forward to conceal her
daughter. She was eager and yet ashamed to listen.

Another woman was sitting motionless, with her head leaning forward,
but her mouth compressed as if she were defending herself tragically.
And beneath the worldly mask of her face, I saw a fanatical martyr's
smile impress itself like handwriting.

And the men! I distinctly heard one man, the man who was so calm and
simple, catch his breath. Another man, with a characterless business
man's face, was making a great effort to talk of this and that to a
young girl sitting next to him, while he watched her with a look of
which he was ashamed and which made him blink. And everybody condemned
the satyr in terms of the greatest abuse.

And so, for a moment, they had not lied. They had almost confessed,
perhaps unconsciously, and even without knowing what they had
confessed. They had almost been their real selves. Desire had leaped
into their eyes, and the reflection passed--and I had seen what happened
in the silence, sealed by their lips.

It is this, it is this thought, this kind of living spectre, that I
wished to study. I rose, shrugging my shoulders, and hurried out,
impelled by eagerness to see the sincerity of men and women unveiled
before my eyes, beautiful as a masterpiece in spite of its ugliness.
So, back in my room again, I placed myself against the wall as if to
embrace it and look down into the Room.

There it was at my feet. Even when empty, it was more alive than the
people one meets and associates with, the people who have the vastness
of numbers to lose themselves in and be forgotten in, who have voices
for lying and faces to hide themselves behind.

CHAPTER III

Night, absolute night. Shadows thick as velvet hung all around.

Everything sank into darkness. I sat down and leaned my elbow on the
round table, lighted by the lamp. I meant to work, but as a matter of
fact I only listened.

I had looked into the Room a short time before. No o