The argument silenced Celia.  If she refused this condition now she would excite Mme. Dauvray to a terrible suspicion.  She drew on her gloves ruefully and slowly, smoothed them over her elbows, and buttoned them.  To free her hands with her fingers and wrists already hampered in gloves would not be so easy a task.  But there was no escape.  Adele Rossignol was watching her with a satiric smile.  Mme. Dauvray was urging her to be quick.  Obeying a second order the girl raised her skirt and extended a slim foot in a pale-green silk stocking and a satin slipper to match.  Adele was content.  Celia was wearing the shoes she was meant to wear.  They were made upon the very same last as those which Celia had just kicked off upstairs.  An almost imperceptible nod from Helene Vauquier, moreover, assured her.

She took up a length of the thin cord.

“Now, how are we to begin?” she said awkwardly.  “I think I will ask you, mademoiselle, to put your hands behind you.”

Celia turned her back and crossed her wrists.  She stood in her satin frock, with her white arms and shoulders bare, her slender throat supporting her small head with its heavy curls, her big hat—­a picture of young grace and beauty.  She would have had an easy task that night had there been men instead of women to put her to the test.  But the women were intent upon their own ends:  Mme. Dauvray eager for her seance, Adele Tace and Helene Vauquier for the climax of their plot.

Celia clenched her hands to make the muscles of her wrists rigid to resist the pressure of the cord.  Adele quietly unclasped them and placed them palm to palm.  And at once Celia became uneasy.  It was not merely the action, significant though it was of Adele’s alertness to thwart her, which troubled Celia.  But she was extraordinarily receptive of impressions, extraordinarily quick to feel, from a touch, some dim sensation of the thought of the one who touched her.  So now the touch of Adele’s swift, strong, nervous hands caused her a queer, vague shock of discomfort.  It was no more than that at the moment, but it was quite definite as that.

“Keep your hands so, please, mademoiselle,” said Adele; “your fingers loose.”

And the next moment Celia winced and had to bite her lip to prevent a cry.  The thin cord was wound twice about her wrists, drawn cruelly tight and then cunningly knotted.  For one second Celia was thankful for her gloves; the next, more than ever she regretted that she wore them.  It would have been difficult enough for her to free her hands now, even without them.  And upon that a worse thing befell her.

“I beg mademoiselle’s pardon if I hurt her,” said Adele.