"It's I; may I come in?"
"But I'm not dressed! Is it serious?"
"Yes! Put on a dressing-gown!"
A moment later he entered. His wife, a frail, neurasthenic, thinly pretty woman of forty, was standing with a peignoir hastily clutched about her, a towel in hand, hastily rubbing off the cream with which her maid had been industriously massaging her face. On the dressing-table was a heap of hair in disordered braids. The mellow shades on the electric candles flung frightened shadows on the sharp oval face and the penciled eyebrows, that took flight above the nervous eyes, now white with an exaggerated alarm.
"Send"—he did not even know the name of his wife's maid—"send her away!"
"Lucille, laissez-moi; je vous sonnerai plus tard!" Mrs. Massingale said directly, her eyes on her husband's face. She went to the door, closing it and came swiftly back.
"Harold, what is it?" she cried breathlessly. "Are we ruined?"
"No!" he said, with a touch of irony in his voice. "No; it is not money matters!"
She had seen the specter of bankruptcy before her eyes at his incomprehensible entrance. She shuddered and regained her self-control with a sigh, closing her wrapper more tightly over the disarray at her breast, as if suddenly aware of impropriety in the presence of this man who had entered her rooms after years.
"Sit down!" he said, straddling a chair and resting his arms on the back. "Clara, I am very—I am exceedingly unhappy!"