“Want to go up in the Turkish room and smoke?” he shouted, the apoplectic purple of exertion rushing into his face and round to the roll of flesh overhanging the rear of his collar.

"Pardon?"

“Smoke?  Do you smoke?  Smokez-vous?  Cigarez-vous?  See, like this.  Fume.  Blow.  Do you smoke?  Smokez-vous?”

"Pardon?" said the marquis, bowing low.

* * * * *

In the heavy solitude of Mrs. Meyerburg’s bedchamber, the buzz of departures over, silence lay resumed, but with a singing quality to it as if an echo or so still lingered.

Before the plain deal table, and at her side two files bulging their contents, Mrs. Meyerburg sat with her spatulate finger conning in among a page of figures.  After a while the finger ceased to move across the page, but lay passive midway down a column.  After another while she slapped shut the book and took to roaming up and down the large room as if she there found respite from the spirit of her which nagged and carped.  Peering out between the heavy curtains, she could see the tide of the Avenue mincing, prancing, chugging past.  Resuming her beat up and down the vistas of the room, she could still hear its voice muffled and not unlike the tune of quinine singing in the head.

The ormolu clock struck, and from various parts of the house musical repetitions.  A French tinkle from her daughter’s suite across the hall; from somewhere more remote the deep, leisurely tones of a Nuremberg floor clock.  Finally Mrs. Meyerburg dropped into the overstuffed chair beside her window, relaxing into the attitude her late years had brought her, head back, hands stretched out along the chair sides, and full of rest.  An hour she sat half dozing, and half emerging every so often with a start, then lay quietly looking into space, her eyes quiet and the erstwhile brilliancy in them gone out like a light.

Presently she sat forward suddenly, and with the quick light of perception flooding up into her face; slid from her chair and padded across the carpet.  From the carved chest alongside the wall she withdrew the short jacket with the beaver collar, worked her shoulders into it.  From the adjoining boudoir she emerged after a time in a small bonnet grayish with age and the bow not perky.  Her movements were brief and full of decision.  When she opened her door it was slyly and with a quick, vulpine glance up and down the grave quiet of the halls.  After a cocked attitude of listening and with an incredible springiness almost of youth, Mrs. Meyerburg was down a rear staircase, through a rear hallway, and, unseen and unheard, out into the sudden splendor of a winter’s day, the side street quiet before her.

“Gott!” said Mrs. Meyerburg, audibly, breathing deep and swinging into a smart lope eastward.  Two blocks along, with her head lifted and no effort at concealment, she passed her pantry-boy walking out with a Swedish girl whose cheeks were bursting with red.  He eyed his mistress casually and without recognition.