“Hello, there, Master,” said the marquis to him.
“You call him Master?” asked the young man.
“That’s what everybody calls him.”
Lulu, the colonel’s daughter, and two girl friends of hers passed by the marquis and his young companion.
“How pretty they are,” commented the marquis.
The place took on the mixed appearance of a brothel and a high-class den of vice. There was here neither the anxious silence of the gambling-house nor the confused clamour of a brothel: people gambled and loved with discretion. As the Colonel’s wife put it, this was a very modernistic gathering.
On the divans the girls were conversing very animatedly with the men; they were discussing and studying out combinations for the game....
“All this delights me,” said the marquis with his pale smile.
The baroness was beginning to feel somewhat nauseated and wished to be going.
“I’m off. Will you come along with me, Horacio?” she asked of her cousin.