Then the lady of the scissors looked round upon him, and the door closed.
"One moment, monsieur, while madame throws on a garment!" A sudden loss of nerve, a sudden desire for flight seized upon Max.

He had mounted the stairs anticipating the viewing of empty rooms, and now he was confronted with a furnished and inhabited _appartement_, and commanded to wait 'while madame threw on a garment'! A hundred speculations crowded to his mind.

Into what _milieu_ was he about to be hurled?
What sordid morning scene was he about to witness?
In a strange confusion of ideas, the white face of the woman Lize sprang to his imagination, coupled with the memory of the empty champagne bottle and the battered tray of the first night at the Hotel Railleux.

A deadly sensitiveness oppressed him; he turned sharply to his guide.
"Madame! Madame! It is an altogether unreasonable hour to intrude--" The reopening of the door on the right checked him, and a gentle voice broke across his words: "Now, madame, if you will!" He turned, his heart still beating quickly, and a sudden shame at his own thoughts--a sudden relief so strong as almost to be painful--surged through him.
The open door revealed a woman of forty-five, perhaps of fifty, clothed in a meagre black skirt and a plain linen wrapper of exquisite cleanliness.

It was this cleanliness that struck the note of her personality--that fitted her as a garment, accentuating the quiet austerity of her thin figure, the streaks of gray in her brown hair, the pale face marked with suffering and sympathy and repression.
With an instinctive deference the boy bared his head.
"Madame," he stammered, "I apologize profoundly for my intrusion at such an hour." "Do not apologize, monsieur.