“You others can run away and get off your clothes. I want to have a little talk by myself with this delicate Miss Touch-me-not,” she said, lolling over the counter with a wicked leer on her coarse red face and licking her lips over her victim. The others were very glad to hurry away and leave the old harridan and Marguerite alone in the gaudily tiled, brightly lit room. They kept the door of the dressing room ajar, so that they could both see and hear what took place. But for a minute or two Madame Delagrange contented herself with chuckling and rubbing her fat hands together and looking Marguerite up and down from head to foot and almost frightening the girl out of her wits. Marguerite stood in front of the counter looking in her short dancing skirt like a schoolgirl awaiting punishment.
“So this is how we repay kindnesses!” Madame Delagrange began, slowly wetting her lips with her tongue. According to Henriette she was exactly like an ogress in a picture book savouring in anticipation the pretty morsel she meant to devour for supper. “We make troubles and inconveniences for the kind old fool of a woman who lets us sing our little songs in her Bar and dance with her clients and who pays us generously into the bargain. We won’t help her at all to keep the roof over her head. We treat her rich clients like mud. Only the beautiful officers are good enough for us! Bah! And we are virtuous too! Oh, he, he, he! Yes, but virtue isn’t bread and butter, my little one. So here’s an address.” She took a slip of paper from the shelf behind her and pushed it towards Marguerite. Marguerite took a step forward to the counter and picked up the paper.
“What am I to do with this, Madame?” she asked in perplexity.
“You are to go to that address, Mademoiselle.”
“To-morrow?”
“Now, little fool!”
“Why?”
“He is waiting for you.”
Marguerite shrank back, her face white as paper, her great eyes wide with horror.
“Who?” she asked in a whisper.