CHAPTER XV
Before dressing, Philippe Dellion pulled aside the window-curtains, and, looking out into the light-spangled night, watched the carriage lamps passing to and fro in the busy street. For a moment or two the sight pleased him; he had been in this room, separated from the outer world, for the space of two hours.
“What are you looking at, mon petit?” asked Madame de Gromance, sitting up in the bed and arranging her tumbled hair. “Do strike a light, it is impossible to see a thing.”
He lighted the candles that stood in little copper stands on either side of a gilded clock adorned with shepherds and shepherdesses. The gentle light reflected itself in the wardrobe and made the rosewood cornice glisten. Little rays flickering everywhere in the room, lit up the scattered garments and died gently away in the curtains’ folds.
The room was an apartment in a highly respectable hotel, in a street near the Boulevard des Capucines. Madame de Gromance, in her wisdom, had selected it, refusing to have anything to do with the less subtle arrangements of Philippe, who had hired a little rez-de-chaussée, in the lonely Avenue Kléber. It was her opinion that a woman who wished to keep her affairs to herself must see that they take place in the very heart of Paris, in some respectable hotel frequented by people of divers races and tongues. She hardly ever spent more than two consecutive months in Paris, but she frequently met Philippe there, and in far greater security than she could have done in the provinces.
As she sat on the edge of the bed, the soft light fell upon her fair fluffy hair, the milk-white skin of her sloping shoulders, and her pretty but somewhat drooping breast.
“I am sure I shall be late again,” she said. “Tell me the time, mon-petit, and don’t make a mistake. It’s really important!”
“Why do you always call me ‘mon petit’? Ten past six,” he returned in a surly voice.
“Ten past six? Are you quite sure? I call you ‘mon petit’ because I love you. What would you have me call you?”