"Why?" Helen asked, calmly. "If you could begin in the dark, why can't you finish in the dark? You and she seem to like being in the dark."
"Mr. Ollerenshaw!" The voice was a little nearer.
"Her's coming!" James ejaculated.
Helen seemed to lose her courage before that threat.
"Here! Take this one, then!" said she, giving James her candle, and fleeing down the corridor.
James had the sensation of transacting a part in a play at a theatre where the scenery was absolutely realistic and at the same time of a romantic quality. Moonlight streaming in through the windows of the interminable corridor was alone wanting to render the illusion perfect. It was certainly astonishing—what you could buy with seven thousand two hundred and fifty pounds! Perhaps the most striking portion of the scenery was Helen's peignoir. He had not before witnessed her in a peignoir. The effect of it was agreeable; but, indeed, the modern taste for luxury was incredible! He wondered if Mrs. Prockter practised similar extravagances.
While such notions ran through his head he was hurrying to the stairs, and dropping a hail of candle-grease on the floor. He found Mrs. Prockter slowly and cautiously ascending the stairway. If he was at the summit of Mont Blanc she had already reached Les Grands Mulets.
"What is it?" she asked, pausing, and looking up at him with an appealing gesture.
"What's what?"
"Why have you been so long?" It was as if she implied that these minutes without him were an eternity of ennui. He grew more and more conceited. He was already despising Don Juan as a puling boy.