The contrast was between natural and artificial loveliness, and the glaring, panting stranger seemed to appreciate this fact.
Long as the time seemed, it was in truth but a few moments that they both stood silently watching each other, neither ready to utter the first word.
Then, so quickly that it seemed all to take place in the twinkling of an eye, there came a rapid step in the inner room, a hand dragged the white-clad woman roughly away, and at the same time and by the same movement the curtain was drawn across the opening between the rooms, shutting Audrey out into the twilight of the darkened room.
Then she heard the woman’s voice, savage, passionate, full of an emotion so strong that it seemed to strangle her, weak and ill as she evidently was.
“Madame Rocada! Madame Rocada!” she cried, gasping out the name in withering tones, hoarse and broken, yet eloquent of rage and scorn. “Let me see her, let me speak to her, let me see what she has to say for herself. Do you think you can stop me, you!”
Audrey, bewildered and alarmed, wondering who it was that had seized the stranger and dragged her away from the door, crept close to the curtain to learn more of this intrusion and the cause.
She had fancied herself alone in the long suite of rooms; for Marie Laure, who slept on the premises in a tiny room at the back, had gone out to do some shopping, and it was in her absence that poor Audrey, broken down and miserable, had indulged in the fit of tears which had been so strangely interrupted.
Whose then was the hand that had seized the stranger? A strong one it must have been, to do so much so quickly!
Surely, thought Audrey, it must be the hand of a man. She crept nearer and nearer to the curtain, making ready to pull it sharply back, and to take the two persons within by surprise.
But even as she advanced, she heard by the fainter sound of the woman’s voice that she was being drawn away, and that she was being gagged.