Peggy closed the lid of the piano with a bang. "Now, Pauline," she said, "don't be silly. Off you go to bed. I feel ever so much better now."
The maid gathered up the brushes and the bottle of eau-de-cologne from the table and took them into Mrs. Admaston's room. Then she returned. "Good night, madame," she said. "If you want me, that little bell there rings in my room. Boone nuit. Dormez bien, chèrie."
She kissed her mistress and left the room.
Peggy remained alone.
CHAPTER III
Mrs. Admaston pulled aside the long curtains of green silk. She turned the oblong handle which released two of the windows, pulled it towards her, and drank in the fresh night air.
How fragrant and stimulating it was. How pure, and how different from the horrid, scented air of the sitting-room!
"'From the cool cisterns of the midnight air my spirit drinks repose,'" Peggy quoted to herself; and she did, indeed, seem to be bathed by a sweet and delicate refreshment, a cleansing, reviving air, which washed all hot and feverish thoughts away and made her one with the stainless spirit of the night.
The black masses—the black, blotted masses—of the trees in the Tuileries gardens cut into the sky-line. But even now, late as it was, innumerable lights twinkled over Paris, and a big honey-coloured moon, which shamed the firefly lights below, and seemed almost like a harvest moon, had risen and was staring down upon the City of Pleasure.