Still mute to its summons, madame sat motionless, her needles flying with incredible rapidity.
Then, higher up in the building, a door opened. Hurried shuffling footsteps descended the stair and pattered along the passage.
‘C’est Marie.’
As she spoke, Madame raised her face, and, for the first time, Quality saw her eyes.
Swiftly he averted his own, shrinking back before that stare of unholy guilt.
She had betrayed him.
For a fractional measure of time, he was rent by the throes of an elemental passion to grip the woman’s throat and wring out her life in bubbling breaths. But the wholly foreign impulse came and passed almost simultaneously at the grating scream of a withdrawn bolt.
The sound of a man’s voice, sharp and peremptory, drowned the woman’s quavering tones in a rapid colloquy.
Then there was silence, followed by the slam of a door.