Another girl, in bed with a lover, who was answering for her legality, was acting the honest woman who had been grossly insulted and spoke of bringing an action against the prefect of police.

For close on an hour there was a noise of heavy shoes on the stairs, of fists hammering on doors, of shrill disputes terminating in sobs, of petticoats rustling along the walls, of all the sounds, in fact, attendant on the sudden awakening and scared departure of a flock of women as they were roughly packed off by three plain-clothes men, headed by a little oily-mannered, fair-haired commissary of police.

After they had gone the hotel relapsed into deep silence.
Nobody had betrayed her; Nana was saved.

Shivering and half dead with fear, she came groping back into the room.

Her bare feet were cut and bleeding, for they had been torn by the grating.