Leroux, rubbing his chin, perplexedly, walked in after her. He
scarcely had his foot upon the study carpet, ere the woman started up,
tremulously, and shot out from the enveloping furs a bare arm and a
pointing, quivering finger.
"Close the door!" she cried hoarsely--"close the door!... He has...
followed me!"...
The disturbed novelist, as a man in a dream, turned, retraced his steps,
and closed the outer door of the flat. Then, rubbing his chin more
vigorously than ever and only desisting from this exercise to fumble in
his dishevelled hair, he walked back into the study, whose Athenean calm
had thus mysteriously been violated.
Two minutes to midnight; the most respectable flat in respectable
Westminster; a lonely and very abstracted novelist--and a pale-faced,
beautiful woman, enveloped in costly furs, sitting staring with fearful
eyes straight before her. This was such a scene as his sense of the
proprieties and of the probabilities could never have permitted Henry
Leroux to create.
His visitor kept moistening her dry lips and swallowing, emotionally.
Standing at a discreet distance from her:--
"Madam," began Leroux, nervously.
She waved her hand, enjoining him to silence, and at the same time
intimating that she would explain herself directly speech became
possible.
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