'Go to her now at once,' she said, 'before you have time to think it over. Show her the letter; tell her the whole story. Off with you. Ah! wait a minute.'
She left the room quickly, and came back again with the dressing-bag in her hand.
'Will you take it now?' she said, with her enchanting smile.
He could not speak; there was a pathos about her gaiety that gripped his throat.
'All happiness to you and her, dear Bertie,' she said. 'Now go away.'
It was between eleven and twelve that night when Bertie left the smoking-room and went upstairs. His wife had gone some quarter of an hour before, but Mr. Palmer had detained him talking. He tapped at her bedroom door; her maid opened it, and after a moment he was admitted. She was sitting before her glass in a blue silk and lace dressing-gown, and her hair, a rippling sheet of molten gold, was streaming down her back.
'You want to speak to me?' she asked.
'If I may.'
'You can go,' she said to the maid. 'I will send for you if I want you.'
Amelie got up, smoothing her hair back behind her ears. If she had been the most finished coquette, she would have done exactly that; art would have imitated the complete naturalness of the movement. Her face was very pale, and looked infinitely weary, but its beauty, the beauty of that falling river of gold, the beauty of her bare arm, and the gentle swell of her bosom, half seen through the low opening of the neck of her dressing-gown, had never been more dazzling. But her eyes were lustreless; they looked on him as on a stranger.