“Entrez, monsieur,” a shrill feminine voice replied.
Peter entered and closed the door behind him. The commissionaire remained outside. Mademoiselle Celaire turned to greet her visitor.
“It is a few words I desire with you as quickly as possible, if you please, Monsieur le Baron,” she said, advancing towards him. “Listen.”
She had brushed out her hair and it hung from her head straight and a little stiff, almost like the hair of an Indian woman. She had washed her face, too, free of all cosmetics and her pallor was almost waxen. She wore a dressing gown of green silk. Her discarded black frock lay upon the floor.
“I am entirely at your service, mademoiselle,” Peter answered, bowing. “Continue, if you please.”
“You sup with me to-night—you are my guest.”
He hesitated.
“I am very much honored,” he murmured. “It is an affair of urgency, then? Mademoiselle will remember that I am not alone here.”
She threw out her hands scornfully.
“They told me in Paris that you were a genius!” she exclaimed. “Cannot you feel, then, when a thing is urgent? Do you not know it without being told? You must meet me with a carriage at the stage door in forty minutes. We sup in Hamilton Place with Andrea Korust and his brother.”