Madame's expression of contrition seemed to endorse this reproof. She hesitated with a hand on the doorknob.
"Monsieur is prepared to vouch for the young woman?"
"Certainly," he assented, with an imperturbable countenance masking a creepy, crawly feeling that perhaps he might be letting himself in for more than he bargained.
"Very good. I go, with apologies." Madame opened the door. "Thursday, you said?"
He repeated without bothering to correct her: "Joan Thursday."
"Barbarous names of these mad Americans!"
The door, closing, totally eclipsed the grenadier.
With thoughtful deliberation Matthias (smiling guiltily) tore Joan's note into minute bits and, dropping them in a waste-basket, dismissed her message and herself entirely from his mind.
Five minutes later the typewriter was rattling cheerily.
But its staccato chattering continued without serious interruption only for the time required to cover two pages and part of a third. Then came a long interval of smoke-soothed meditation, which ended with the young man cheerfully placing fresh paper in the machine and starting all over again. This time he worked more slowly, weighing carefully the value of lines already written before recasting and committing them to paper; but the third sheet was covered without evident error, and a fourth, and then a fifth. Indeed the type-bars were drumming heartily on the last quarter of page 6, when suddenly the young man paused, scowled, thrust back his chair and groaned from his heart.