two, after an eighteen-hour trick, and was going out again to get on the boulevards before the theatres were over.
My plan was to leave a little after Rosalie and go directly to Ivan's house, over by the Parc Monceau. After looking the ground over carefully, I would go in and try my luck with Ivan. It was very possible that I might not get out alive, as Ivan might consider the opportunity of suppressing me too good a one to let go by, and the armed weasels that were his servants would make quick and quiet work of it. I was getting rather tired of the whole filthy business, however, and asked nothing better than to have it over with, one way or the other. I felt like the old man whose wife had been a bedridden invalid for five years, when he said to the physician: "Wa'al, doc, I do wish she'd git better or—somethin!"
A little before ten Rosalie came out, clad in a kimono, her hair tumbled about her ears and her eyes red-rimmed and tired.
"I couldn't sleep," said she; "so I thought I'd come out and talk to you. Oh! Isn't it all horrid?"
She caught her breath and covered her face with her hands. She was pretty well used up, poor girl, for the tourist crowd had kept her on the trot night and day, and my own affair had got horribly on her nerves. More than once I'd cursed myself for a fool for having let her take me home.
"Rosalie," said I, "you are all fagged out. You've been going it too strong. Can't you take all night in and rest up a little?"
