Chapter 11 - Page 2

seemed to be standing on its head. I was
overcome; but I felt for the person in the next room. I did not know
what to do. Suddenly I found myself saying:

"I am extremely sorry, madam, but I don't understand French." An
expression of more intense vexation passed into her face--her beautiful
face. I fancy she wished--wished intensely--to give me the benefit of
her "_idée à elle_." She made a quick, violent gesture of disgusted
contempt, and turned toward the half-open door from which she had come.
She began again to dilate upon the little weaknesses of the person
behind, when silently and swiftly it closed. We heard the lock click.
With extraordinary quickness she had her mouth at the keyhole: "_Peeg,
peeg_," she enunciated. Then she stood to her full height, her face
became calm, her manner stately. She glided half way across the room,
paused, looked at me, and pointed toward the unmoving door.

"_Peeg, peeg_," she explained, mysteriously. I think she was warning me
against the wiles of the person behind the door. I gazed into her great
eyes. "I understand," I said, gravely. She glided from the room. For me
the incident supplied a welcome touch of comedy. I had leisure for
thought. The door remained closed. It made the Duc a more real person
for me. I had regarded him as a rather tiresome person in whom a pompous
philanthropism took the place of human feelings. It amused me to be
called _Le Grangeur_. It amused me, and I stood in need of amusement.
Without it I might never have written the article on the Duc. I had
started out that morning in a state of nervous irritation. I had wanted
more than ever to have done with the thing, with the _Hour_, with
journalism, with everything. But this little new experience buoyed me
up, set my mind working in less morbid lines. I began to wonder whether
de Mersch would funk, or whether he would take my non-comprehension of
the woman's tirades as a thing assured.

The door at which I had entered, by which she had left, opened.

He must have impressed me in some way or other that evening at the
Churchills. He seemed a very stereotyped image in my memory. He spoke
just as he had spoken, moved his hands just as I expected him to move
them. He called for no modification of my views of his person. As a rule
one classes a man so-and-so at first meeting, modifies the
classification at each subsequent one, and so on. He seemed to be all
affability, of an adipose turn. He had the air of the man of the world
among men of the world; but none of the unconscious reserve of manner
that one expects to find in the temporarily great. He had in its place a
kind of sub-sulkiness, as if he regretted the pedestal from which