There was, to be sure, a motor brougham in the street, for a wonder (usually the Rue d'Hollande is as empty as a desert, after eleven o'clock), but a girl's face peered out at me from the window--an impish, curiously abnormal little face it was--extinguishing the spark of hope that sprang to life as I caught sight of the carriage.
It was standing before the closed gate of a house almost opposite mine, and the girl seemed somewhat interested in me; but I was not at all interested in her, and I hate being stared at as if I were something in a museum.
The gate is always kept locked at night, when I'm at the theatre; but Marianne has the key, and we let ourselves in when we come, for only old Henri sits up, and he is growing a little deaf.

A moment, and we were inside, the chauffeur spinning away to the garage.
Usually I am newly delighted every night with my quaint old house and its small, but pretty garden, to which it seems delightful to come home after hours of hard work at the theatre.

But to-night, though a cheerful light shone out from between the drawn curtains of the salon, the place looked inexpressibly dreary, even forbidding, to me.

I felt that I hated the house, though I had chosen it after a long search for peacefulness and privacy.

How gloomy, how dead, was the street beyond the high wall, with all its windows closed like the eyes of corpses.