The third woman was the maid, Elise.  The hotel had invented and delivered Elise, and thereafter seemed easier in its mind.  Elise was thirty years of age and not repellent of aspect.  On a black dress she wore the smallest white muslin apron that either Audrey or Miss Ingate had ever seen.  She kept pins in her mouth, but in other respects showed few eccentricities beyond an extreme excitability.  When at eight o’clock Mademoiselle’s new gown, promised for seven, had not arrived, Elise begged permission to use Madame’s salts.  When the bell rang at eight-thirty, and a lackey brought in an oval-shaped box with a long loop to it of leathern strap, she only just managed not to kiss the lackey.  The rapid movement of Mademoiselle and Elise with the contents of the box from the drawing-room into Mademoiselle’s bedroom was the last rushing and swishing that preceded a considerable peace.

Madame was absolutely ready, in her bedroom.  In the large mirror of the dark wardrobe she surveyed her victoriously young face, the magnificent grey dress, the coiffure, the jewels, the spangled shoes, the fan; and the ensemble satisfied her.  She was intensely and calmly happy.  No thought of the past nor of the future, nor of what was going on in other parts of the earth’s surface could in the slightest degree impair her happiness.  She had done nothing herself, she had neither earned money nor created any of the objects which adorned her; nor was she capable of doing the one or the other.  Yet she felt proud as well as happy, because she was young and superbly healthy, and not unattractive.  These were her high virtues.  And her attitude was so right that nobody would have disagreed with her.

Her left ear was listening for the sound, through the unlatched window, of the arrival of the automobile with Musa and his fiddle inside it.

Then the door leading from Mademoiselle’s bedroom opened sharply, and Mademoiselle appeared, with her grey hair, her pale shining forehead, her sardonic grin, and the new dress of those Empire colours, magenta and green.  Elise stood behind, trembling with satisfaction.

“Well——­” Audrey began.  But she heard the automobile, and told Elise to run and be ready to open the front door of the flat.

“Rather showy, isn’t it?  Rather daring?” said Miss Ingate, advancing self-consciously and self-deprecating.

“Winnie,” answered Audrey.  “It’s a nice question between you and the Queen of Sheba.”

Suddenly Miss Ingate beheld in the mirror the masterpiece of an illustrious male dressmaker-a masterpiece in which no touch of the last fashion was abated-and little Essex Winnie grinning from within it.

She screamed.  And forthwith putting her hands behind her neck she began to unhook the corsage.

“What are you doing, Winnie?”

“I’m taking it off.”

“But why?”

“Because I’m not going to wear it.”

“But you’ve nothing else to wear.”