“How odd it is that the Joyeuses should care to hobnob with demi-castors. Shall we go?”
That demi-castors meant bounders generally, and, in this instance, specifically, she would, ordinarily, have been insufficiently familiar with the slang of the boulevards to know. But she did not hear. Moreover, the remark required no reply. Even otherwise she was unable to speak, and it was not until Barouffski reiterated his suggestion that mechanically she acceded to it with a movement of the head.
Her demeanor then in traversing the salons, her leave-taking of the duchess, her bearing in descending the stairs, were as mechanical as her reply to Barouffski, and it was not until after the motor had dropped him, as he had asked that it should, at the door of the Little Club, that, at last alone, the mental anchylosis fell by.
At once in a sort of retrograde vision, she relived the past. There had been the flight from Coronado, the halt at Salt Lake, the descent into Nevada, the divorce, the journey abroad, the platonic marriage to Barouffski. These—the succeeding episodes in the drama of her life—were so many hostages to joy, barricades thrown one after another between Verplank and herself, and unavailingly thrown, since, with but a look, they were almost destroyed.
They had seemed wholly impregnable, but she knew then that unless reinforced by surer bars, they would one and all collapse. At the foreknowledge of that she appreciated what the heroines in the old tragedies endured, when circled by the seven-times-twisted coil of fate. Yet, though they had yielded, she would not yield, and it was with this determination that she alighted in the rue de la Pompe.
The house there had a church for neighbour, and stood between a court and a garden. Before the court was a high, white wall. The garden extended back to the parallel street, where, also, was a wall. The entrance to the court was a double doorway, the entrance to the garden was an iron gate. Between the gate and the house were large urns, a marble bench, a marble chair, most noticeably the kennels of two mastiffs, pets of Barouffski who, at whatever hour he returned at night, had them loosed. They were, he declared, a great protection, as indeed they were—for him. Apart from the occasional barking of these dogs, barring also occasional music from the church, usually the garden was quiet. But that was in the order of things. It lacked both stable and garage. These had been secured elsewhere.
Except for that detail, the arrangements generally were satisfactory. The house was commodious, agreeably furnished. On the ground floor were the usual offices, beneath which the servants slept. On the floor above were the salons and dining hall. Above these were the bedrooms. On this upper floor the apartment which Barouffski occupied gave on the street, while Leilah’s overlooked the garden.
Adjacent to her suite was a stairway designed for servants, but which, because of its convenience, she occasionally used. It led directly to the dining hall, and from there she could descend into the garden.
It had a superior advantage. It enabled her to avoid the hazards of the main stairway, which was used by Barouffski, whom nearer acquaintance had discovered to her without the mask—without one mask, that is—for histrion that he was, he had many, but the best, the feigned nobility of noble pride, the assumed parage, had gone.