of its object. And worst of all Olga was doing nothing whatever to check it. If anything, though one's nerves and senses were in no condition to be trusted, she leaned nearer in response to his uncontrollable encroachment.
They drove through a park and drew up at the door of a small château. Léon had been commissioned to telephone in advance to Noémi's sister, a pinched and bony woman in tweeds to whom everybody, including the servants, seemed to give orders, and there were lights and fires and a well laden buffet to receive them.
When Noémi had taken them through the house they gathered in the salon, and though it was three in the morning she yielded to the plea of the Marchesa, seconded by M. Nussbaum, for music. Playing her own accompaniments, she sang at haphazard a number of songs, including one of the most rapturously applauded items in her concert repertoire, Debussy's La Chevelure. It was hard to believe that the woman who had been talking and laughing so obstreperously in a voice that was raucous and mannish could produce the dull gold thread of sound that rose and fell and lost itself in the vague, sighing tissue of subtle harmonies. Carlotta's eyes, fixed on the singer as she sat in the soft circle of light shed by the piano lamp, fascinated and magnetized, well-ed with tears, and when the song was done Grover, still nursing a litter of cynical feelings, wondered whether the Mar-
