covered with bric-a-brac, and three tall flower-vases were filled with purple lilac. But there was a general air of untidiness about the room; for strewn over the chairs and tables were numerous small articles of dress and the toilet-hairpins, a veil, a hat and a skirt—all traces of her intimate presence.
As she lifted the lamp from the writing-table to place it on the square table before the sofa, Madeleine called her attention to a folded paper that had lain beneath it.
"It seems to be a letter for you."
She caught at it with a kind of avidity, tore it open, and heedless of their presence, devoured it, not only with her eyes: but with her parted lips and eager hands. When she looked up again, her cheeks had a tinge of colour in them; her eyes shone like faceted jewels; her smile was radiant and infectious. With no regard for appearances, she buttoned the note in the bosom of her dress.
"Now we will look for the purse," she said. "But come in, Mr. Guest—you are still standing at the door. I shall think you are offended with me. Oh, how hot the room is!—and the lilac is stifling. First the windows open! And then this scarf off, and some more light. You will help me to look, will you not?"
It was to Maurice she spoke, with a childlike upturning of her face to his—an irresistibly confiding gesture. She disappeared behind the screen, and came out bareheaded, nestling with both hands at the coil of hair on her neck. Then she lit two candles that stood on the piano in brass candlesticks, and Maurice lighted her round the room, while she searched in likely and unlikely places—inside the piano, in empty vases, in the folds of the curtains—laughing at herself as she did so, until Madeleine said that this was only nonsense, and came after them herself. When Maurice held the candle above the writing-table, he lighted three large photographs of Schilsky, one more dandified than the other; and he was obliged to raise his other hand to steady the candlestick.
At last, following a hint from Madeleine, they discovered the purse between the back of the sofa and the seat; and now Louise remembered that it had been in the pocket of her dressing-gown that afternoon.
"How stupid of me! I might have known," she said contritely. "So many things have gone down there in their day. Once a silver hair-brush that I was fond of; and I sometimes look there when bangles or hat-pins are missing," and letting her eyes dance at Maurice, she threw back her head and laughed.
Here, however, another difficulty arose; except for a few nickel coins, the purse was found to contain only gold, and the required change could not be made up.
"Never mind; take one of the twenty-mark pieces," she urged. "Yes, Madeleine, I would rather you did;" and when Madeleine hinted that Maurice might not find it too troublesome to come back with the change the following day, she turned to the young man, and saying: "Yes, if Mr. Guest would be so kind," smiled at him with such a gracious warmth that it was all he could do to reply with a decent unconcern.
But the hands of the clock on the writing-table were nearing half-past eleven, and now it was she who referred to the lateness of the hour.
"Thank you very much," she said to Maurice on parting. "And you must forget the nonsense I talked this evening. I didn't mean it—not a word of it." She laughed and held out her hand. "I wouldn't shake hands with you this afternoon, but now—if you will? For to-night I am not superstitious. Nothing bad will happen; I'm sure of that. And I am very much obliged to you—for everything. Good night."
Only a few minutes back, he had been steeped in pity for her; now it seemed as if no one had less need of pity or sympathy than she. He was bewildered, and went home to pass alternately from a mood of rapture to one of jealous despair. And the latter was torturous, for, as they walked, Madeleine had let fall such a vile suspicion that he had parted from her in anger, calling as he went that if he believed what she said to be true, he would never put faith in a human being again.
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