Imagine Hardy’s surprise when he reached the address given him, and found it to be an imposing apartment house, with a palm-bedecked entrance and two negro boys in uniform to receive him and inspect him with a hostile air. He went up on the lift to the top floor, and found her there in a splendidly furnished sort of double salon, high-ceilinged, bright with sunshine, with flowers and plants all about. She herself was dressed in a short white garment suspiciously like a wrapper, worn over a voluminous black skirt. Over her soft, mouse-colored hair was tied a bit of lace.
He could scarcely avoid staring at her; she didn’t look dressed. It took him a long time to get used to her domestic costume.
The room, too, disconcerted him. It[Pg 18] was no sort of room to have a lesson in. The elegance, the airy charm of it, destroyed his serious intent. He wanted to sit there and chat with his hostess; and in fact that is what he did.
She offered him Russian cigarettes from a little lacquer box, and while he smoked she instructed him for a few minutes; but they were interrupted by the entrance of a gaunt young girl who brought them weak, fragrant tea and a plate of biscuits. After that there was no more lesson. They talked—or, rather, Mme. Sensobiareff talked and he listened.
The hour passed very agreeably. When he saw by his watch that it was finished, he got up to take his leave.
“One minute, if you please!” she said, and went out of the room.
He waited, looking about him, wondering how it was that a woman existing in such comfort should either need or wish to give lessons for a living. Though it increased the illusion of aristocratic refinement there was about her, it filled him with some misgiving. They couldn’t be entirely ruined!
There was the sound of footsteps in the hall, the curtains parted, and she came in again, followed by a man.
“My husband,” she said. “Paul, this is the gentleman who has been so very kind to me.”
Oh, no doubt that he was ruined, poor devil! His face was like wax, his eyes sunken and extinguished, all his bearing hopeless and despairing. He was a slender, high-shouldered man, younger than she by some years, with fair hair and a light mustache—an upcurled mustache, bitterly at variance with his utter despondency. She was right—no doctor was needed to read his fate. Whatever mysterious malady he had, it had progressed beyond any earthly check.