Pans of sulphur were mysteriously burning in each of the three front rooms, and two pairs of doors had been pasted over with paper, to prevent the fumes from escaping. The charwoman had departed. Sophia, with brush, scissors, flour-paste, and news-sheets, was sealing the third pair of doors, when there was a ring at the front door.
She had only to cross the corridor in order to open.
It was Chirac. She was not surprised to see him. The outbreak of the war had induced even Sophia and her landlady to look through at least one newspaper during the day, and she had in this way learnt, from an article signed by Chirac, that he had returned to Paris after a mission into the Vosges country for his paper.
He started on seeing her. “Ah!” He breathed out the exclamation slowly. And then smiled, seized her hand, and kissed it.
The sight of his obvious extreme pleasure in meeting her again was the sweetest experience that had fallen to Sophia for years.
“Then you are cured?”
“Quite.”
He sighed. “You know, this is an enormous relief to me, to know, veritably, that you are no longer in danger. You gave me a fright ... but a fright, my dear madame!”
She smiled in silence.
As he glanced inquiringly up and down the corridor, she said—