I thought I would say something.

“Have you lived here long?” I asked.

“Over six months on the fifteenth of January.”

“Where were you before that?”

“In the Rue Clauzel. But the janitor made me very uncomfortable and I left.”

And she began to tell me an interminable story of a janitor who had talked scandal about her.

But, suddenly, I heard something moving quite close to us. First there was a sigh, then a slight, but distinct, sound as if some one had turned round on a chair.

I sat up abruptly and asked.

“What was that noise?”

She answered quietly and confidently: