shadow. The door of the drawing room up-stairs opened noiselessly.

A faint pink glow was dying out on the ceiling of the room, and the

red hangings, the deep divans, the lacquered furniture, with their

medley of embroidered fabrics and bronzes and china, were already

sleeping under a slowly creeping flood of shadows, which drowned

nooks and corners and blotted out the gleam of ivory and the glint

of gold. And there in the darkness, on the white surface of a wide,

outspread petticoat, which alone remained clearly visible, he saw