‘But surely you have some tender souvenir of your child’s father?’ I said.
‘Do I know who my child’s father is?’ she demanded. ‘My child has thirty-six fathers!’
‘You seem very bitter,’ I said, ‘for your age. You are much younger than I am.’
She smiled and shook her honey-coloured hair, and toyed with the ribbons of her peignoir.
‘What I say is true,’ she said gently. ‘But, there, what would you have? We hate them, but we love them. They are beasts! beasts! but we cannot do without them!’
Her eyes rested on Diaz for a moment. He slept without the least sound, the stricken and futile witness of our confidences.
‘You will take him away from Paris soon, perhaps?’ she asked.
‘If I can,’ I said.
There was a sound of light footsteps on the stair. They stopped at the door, which I remembered we had not shut. I jumped up and went into the passage. Another girl stood in the doorway, in a peignoir the exact counterpart of my first visitor’s, but rose-coloured. And this one, too, was languorous and had honey-coloured locks. It was as though the mysterious house was full of such creatures, each with her secret lair.
‘Pardon, madame,’ said my visitor, following and passing me; and then to the newcomer: ‘What is it, Alice?’