to transport you wherever you wish to go. Now, he pulled a silver rope which hung from the ceiling, the lights flashed off and on again, and I observed that we were no longer alone. A little black page boy in a rose doublet, with baggy silver trousers, and a turban of scarlet silk, surmounted by heron's plumes, sparkling with carbuncles, stood before us. He had apparently popped out of the floor like the harlequin in an English pantomime. At a sign from Peter, he pressed a button in the wall, a little cupboard opened, and he extracted a bottle of amber crystal, half-full of a clear green liquid, and two amber crystal glasses with iridescent flanges.
I am striving to discover the secrets, said Peter, as we sipped the liqueur, the taste of which was both pungent and bitter.
Not in this room! I gasped. Unless you mean the secrets of Paul Poiret and Léon Bakst.
No, he laughed, as the cat leaped to his shoulder and began to purr loudly, not in this room. This is my reception-room where I receive nobody. You are the first person, with the exception of Hadji, to enter this house since I have remodelled it but, he continued reflectively, I have a fancy that the bright fiends of hell, the beautiful yellow and blue devils, will like this room, when I call them forth to do my bidding.
Again he warned me. Not one word to Edith, do you understand? Not one word. I must be alone. I have told you and only you. I must work in
