It was Aubrey.
She heard him climb flight after flight. He reached the top. Her eyes were on Madelaine’s gossip, but her ears were listening for only one sound.
A door opened and slammed.
There was silence.
CHAPTER LV
Wherein is Some Worship of the Moon
It was the national fête of the Republic—the Fourteenth of July.
All day, Paris had been a-rattle with tap of hammers. At every street corner, baggy-trousered carpenters had been putting the last nails into the pulpits of the lightly made bandstands; and now, as the flaring sun went down in golden glory over the edge of the city, bathing the decorated streets in amber light—the boarding of the bandstands being covered with the gay splendour of tricolour bunting, and gaudy coloured paper lanterns strung in gay festoons from lamp and tree and window—Paris felt herself arrayed in all her holiday attire as she took breath before her dancing.