She had been so happy all these weeks she hadn’t really seen what anything was like, and she had hardly ever been alone for ten minutes. Now she was alone. She remembered with a little smile that Léon had once said of the salon that as an interior it was not seductive.
The Pinsents did not use irony, but Rose thought she rather liked it. In ten minutes precisely Léon was with her. Fortunately Madame de Brenteuil had gone to bed.
Léon entered quickly, looking about him as if he had expected one or more of the Pinsent family to be in attendance. Only Rose, feeling suddenly rather small and very far away, stood under an imitation palm close by the mantelpiece.
Léon took her hands, kissed them, pressing them, and letting them go in one quick movement.
“I am here,” he said, drawing a seat up close to her. “Well--what is this thing that has suddenly become necessary for us to talk about?”
Rose looked at him questioningly. Really she hardly knew what it was that she wanted to see him for, perhaps it was after all only to see him! To count over her riches, to feel the wonderful golden coins slip through her eager fingers. Only now as she met his eyes it seemed to her that he shut her out. He had a strange hard look, and though he smiled, his smile itself had a new quality, a quality which seemed to put her a little to one side. “I don’t quite know, Léon,” she murmured. “I did want to see you--but I think I must have had some reason.”
Léon glanced through the glass door of the salon at the back of the Manageress’ head. “Let us hope so,” he said cheerfully, “for it is ten o’clock and I see no one here but Madame at the Bureau.”
“Father was here--but I sent him away,” Rose explained conscientiously.
Léon gave an odd little laugh. “To-night,” he said, “you are very imperative. But you see we are all your slaves. He went--I came--well--what do you wish of us?”
“Léon,” she whispered, frightened by the coldness of his voice, “weren’t you glad to come?”