“Helene!  Helene!”

And when she entered the salon there was still, as Celia was able to recall, some trace of her smile lingering upon her face.

Adele Rossignol had removed her hat and was taking off her gloves.  Mme. Dauvray was speaking impatiently to Celia.

“We will arrange the room, dear, while Helene helps you to dress.  It will be quite easy.  We shall use the recess.”

And Celia, as she ran up the stairs, heard Mme. Dauvray discussing with her maid what frock she should wear.  She was hot, and she took a hurried bath.  When she came from her bathroom she saw with dismay that it was her new pale-green evening gown which had been laid out.  It was the last which she would have chosen.  But she dared not refuse it.  She must still any suspicion.  She must succeed.  She gave herself into Helene’s hands.  Celia remembered afterwards one or two points which passed barely heeded at the time.  Once while Helene was dressing her hair she looked up at the maid in the mirror and noticed a strange and rather horrible grin upon her face, which disappeared the moment their eyes met.  Then again, Helene was extraordinarily slow and extraordinarily fastidious that evening.  Nothing satisfied her, neither the hang of the girl’s skirt, the folds of her sash, nor the arrangement of her hair.

“Come, Helene, be quick,” said Celia.  “You know how madame hates to be kept waiting at these times.  You might be dressing me to go to meet my lover,” she added, with a blush and a smile at her own pretty reflection in the glass; and a queer look came upon Helene Vauquier’s face.  For it was at creating just this very impression that she aimed.

“Very well, mademoiselle,” said Helene.  And even as she spoke Mme. Dauvray’s voice rang shrill and irritable up the stairs.

“Celie!  Celie!”

“Quick, Helene,” said Celia.  For she herself was now anxious to have the seance over and done with.

But Helene did not hurry.  The more irritable Mme. Dauvray became, the more impatient with Mlle. Celie, the less would Mlle. Celie dare to refuse the tests Adele wished to impose upon her.  But that was not all.  She took a subtle and ironic pleasure to-night in decking out her victim’s natural loveliness.  Her face, her slender throat, her white shoulders, should look their prettiest, her grace of limb and figure should be more alluring than ever before.  The same words, indeed, were running through both women’s minds.

“For the last time,” said Celia to herself, thinking of these horrible seances, of which to-night should see the end.

“For the last time,” said Helene Vauquier too.  For the last time she laced the girl’s dress.  There would be no more patient and careful service for Mlle. Celie after to-night.  But she should have it and to spare to-night.  She should be conscious that her beauty had never made so strong an appeal; that she was never so fit for life as at the moment when the end had come.  One thing Helene regretted.  She would have liked Celia—­Celia, smiling at herself in the glass—­to know suddenly what was in store for her!  She saw in imagination the colour die from the cheeks, the eyes stare wide with terror.