On and upward moved the steps, the noise decreasing as they passed, the sound subsiding with them.
“What is it?” Verplank asked again.
Leilah’s under lip trembled. The deliverance from the vortex, the after-shudder that comes when some great peril has been barely escaped, the sensation of strength overtaxed, these things fusing with the consciousness that the last barricade had been taken, that there were now no more hostages to joy, induced in her one of the most curious of physical phenomena.
With tears running down her cheeks, she smiled. Then, sobbing and smiling still, she answered him:
“The key of the prison.”
Verplank nodded. He did not in the least understand. But the singularity of her appearance, joined to the singularity of her reply, aroused in him a great pity for this woman who had ruined her life, ruined his own, and who then seemed to him demented.
“Pardon, madame la comtesse. Monsieur Palencia and Monsieur Tyszkiewicz ask if madame la comtesse will receive them?”
At the door, behind her, was Emmanuel.
At once another phenomenon occurred. Galvanised by that instinct of form which, when requisite, enables women of the world to banish instantly any trace of emotion, Leilah turned to the footman a face in which the tears had been reabsorbed, and from which the smile had gone.
“Say to these gentlemen that I appreciate and thank them, but that I can see no one.”