"Are you ready to go, dear?" she asked, and she turned to Adele
Tace. "This is Celie, Mme. Rossignol," she said, and she spoke
with a marked significance and a note of actual exultation in her
voice.
Celia, however, was not unused to this tone. Mme. Dauvray was
proud of her companion, and had a habit of showing her off, to the
girl's discomfort. The three women spoke a few words, and then
Mme. Dauvray and Celia left the rooms and walked to the entrance-
doors. But as they walked Celia became alarmed.
She was by nature extraordinarily sensitive to impressions. It was
to that quick receptivity that the success of "The Great
Fortinbras" had been chiefly due. She had a gift of rapid
comprehension. It was not that she argued, or deducted, or
inferred. But she felt. To take a metaphor from the work of the
man she loved, she was a natural receiver. So now, although no
word was spoken, she was aware that Mme. Dauvray was greatly
excited--greatly disturbed; and she dreaded the reason of that
excitement and disturbance.
While they were driving home in the motor-car she said
apprehensively: "You met a friend then, to-night, madame?"
"No," said Mme. Dauvray; "I made a friend. I had not met Mme.
Rossignol before. A bracelet of hers came undone, and I helped her
to fasten it. We talked afterwards. She lives in Geneva."
Mme. Dauvray was silent for a moment or two. Then she turned
impulsively and spoke in a voice of appeal.
"Celie, we talked of things"; and the girl moved impatiently. She
understood very well what were the things of which Mme. Dauvray
and her new friend had talked. "And she laughed. ... I could not
bear it."
Celia was silent, and Mme. Dauvray went on in a voice of awe: "I told her of the wonderful things which happened when I sat with
Helene in the dark--how the room filled with strange sounds, how
ghostly fingers touched my forehead and my eyes. She laughed--
Adele Rossignol laughed, Celie. I told her of the spirits with
whom we held converse. She would not believe. Do you remember the
evening, Celie, when Mme. de Castiglione came back an old, old
woman, and told us how, when she had grown old and had lost her
beauty and was very lonely, she would no longer live in the great
house which was so full of torturing memories, but took a small
appartement near by, where no one knew her; and how she used to
walk out late at night, and watch, with her eyes full of tears,
the dark windows which had been once so bright with light? Adele
Rossignol would not believe. I told her that I had found the story
afterwards in a volume of memoirs. Adele Rossignol laughed and
said no doubt you had read that volume yourself before the
seance."