All at once a heavy, hurried step.  The Nabob appeared, alone, buttoned up in his black coat, correctly dressed, but with his face upset, his eyes haggard, still trembling from the terrible scene which he had left.

She would not come.

In the morning he had told the maids to dress madame for three o’clock, as he did each time he took out the Levantine with him, when it was necessary to move this indolent person, who, not being able to accept even any responsibility whatever, left others to think, decide, act for her, going willingly where she was desired to go, once she was started.  And it was on this amiability that he counted to take her to Hemerlingue’s.  But when, after dejeuner, Jansoulet dressed, superb, perspiring with the effort to put on gloves, asked if madame would soon be ready, he was told that she was not going out.  The matter was grave, so grave, that putting on one side all the intermediaries of valets and maids, which they made use of in their conjugal dialogues, he ran up the stairs four steps at once like a gust of wind, and entered the draperied rooms of the Levantine.

She was still in bed, dressed in that great open tunic of silk of two colours, which the Moors call a djebba, and in a little cap embroidered with gold, from which escaped her heavy long black hair, all entangled round her moon-shaped face, flushed from her recent meal.  The sleeves of her djebba pushed back showed two enormous shapeless arms, loaded with bracelets, with long chains wandering through a heap of little mirrors, of red beads, of scent-boxes, of microscopic pipes, of cigarette cases—­the childish toyshop collection of a Moorish woman at her rising.

The room, filled with the heavy opium-scented smoke of Turkish tobacco, was in similar disorder.  Negresses went and came, slowly removing their mistress’s coffee, the favourite gazelle was licking the dregs of a cup which its delicate muzzle had overturned on the carpet, while seated at the foot of the bed with a touching familiarity, the melancholy Cabassu was reading aloud to madame a drama in verse which Cardailhac was shortly going to produce.  The Levantine was stupefied with this reading, absolutely astounded.

“My dear,” said she to Jansoulet, in her thick Flemish accent, “I don’t know what our manager is thinking of.  I am just reading this Revolt, which he is so mad about.  But it is impossible.  There is nothing dramatic about it.”

“Don’t talk to me of the theatre,” said Jansoulet, furious, in spite of his respect for the daughter of the Afchins.  “What, you are not dressed yet?  Weren’t you told that we were going out?”

They had told her, but she had begun to read this stupid piece.  And with her sleepy air: 

“We will go out to-morrow.”

“To-morrow!  Impossible.  We are expected to-day.  A most important visit.”

“But where?”

He hesitated a second.