the shock of seeing Olga, but who, as he proceeded into the room (it was the only thing to do), revealed herself to his staggering faculties as the sublime Kundry, the awesome Elektra. Noémi Janvier, squeezed into a shining black gown, her coarse pink skin dulled with powder, her hemp-like crimson hair showing under a cloth of silver head-dress, was staring up at him, a drop of pomegranate syrup glistening on her chin.
Léon, whom he had not seen for more than a year, greeted him as casually as though they had parted the day before, and Olga was looking at him with steady, veiled eyes, and almost a wistful, and as if forgiving! smile. When women have done you an injury, he had noticed, they always wear a look of injury when you next see them, as if to forestall you.
The accidental encounter with so much of his imaginative past acted as a steadier. It was as though he had suddenly been pushed upon a brilliantly lighted stage, with an audience beneath him before whom he should have to caper briskly or appear ludicrous.
"Monsieur Thanet is from Boston, chère amie," Léon explained, and Mme. Janvier's greenish, calculating, disorderly eyes acknowledged that over and above the monotonously colorful bazar of life, that remnant of fact, in conjunction with the young man's person, was of mild interest.
"Vous êtes bien un Cabot ou un Lowell?" she inquired negligently, in a tone that was not quite insolent and not quite polite.
