Mademoiselle la Danseuse, seeing him alone, paused at his table on her way through the room.
"Monsieur is _triste_," she remarked, "because his friends have departed."
"I am off, too, in a few minutes," he answered.
A waiter with immovable face slipped a note into his hand, under cover of presenting the bill. Macheson read it and glanced across the room. Mademoiselle Flossie was watching him with uplifted eyebrows and expectant smile. Macheson shook his head, slightly but unmistakably. The young lady in blue shrugged her shoulders and pouted.
Mademoiselle la Danseuse was watching him curiously.
"I wonder," she said softly, "why monsieur comes here."
"In search of pleasure," Macheson answered grimly.
She looked at him fixedly, and Macheson, momentarily interested, returned her gaze. Then he saw that underneath the false smile, for a moment laid aside, there was something human in her face.
"Monsieur makes a brave show, but he does not succeed," she remarked.
"And you?" he asked. "Why do you come here?"
"It pays--very well," she answered quietly, and left him.
Macheson settled his bill and called for the vestiaire. In the further corner of the room two women were quarrelling. The languid senses of those who still lingered in the place were stirred. The place was electrified instantly with a new excitement. A fight, perhaps--every one crowded around. Unnoticed, Macheson walked out.
Down the narrow stairs he groped his way, with the music of the orchestra, the fierce hysterical cries of the women, the mock cheering of those who crowded round, in his ears. He passed out into the blue-grey dawn. The stars were faint in the sky, and away eastwards little fleecy red clouds were strewn over the house-tops. He stood on the pavement and drew in a long breath. The morning breeze was like a draught of cold water; it was as though he had come back to life again after an interlude spent in some other world. Overhead he could still hear the music of the "Valse Amoureuse," the swell of voices. He shivered, with the cold perhaps--or the memory of the nightmare!
The commissionaire, hat in hand, summoned a coupé, and Macheson took his place in the small open carriage. Down the cobbled street they went, the crazy vehicle swaying upon its worn rubber tyres, past other night resorts with their blaze of lights and string of waiting cabs; past women in light boots, in strange costumes, artificial in colour and shape, painted, bold-eyed, uncanny pilgrims in the City of Pleasure; past the great churches, silent and stern in the cold morning light; past weary-eyed scavengers into the heart of the city, where a thin stream of early morning toilers went on their relentless way. Once more he entered the obscurity of his dimly lit hotel, where sleepy-eyed servants were sweeping, and retired to his room, into which he let himself at last with a sigh of relief. He threw up the blinds and opened the windows. To be alone within those four walls was a blessed thing.