“But, my dear girl,” pleaded Duvillard, “we can’t take you into that den dressed as you are! Just fancy your entering that place in a low-necked gown and covered with diamonds! Why everyone would jeer at us! Come, Gerard, just tell her to be a little reasonable.”
Gerard, equally offended by the idea of such a freak, was quite willing to intervene. But she closed his mouth with her gloved hand and repeated with the gay obstinacy of intoxication: “Pooh, it will be all the more amusing if they do jeer at us! Come, let us be off, let us be off, quick!”
Thereupon Duthil, who had been listening with a smile and the air of a man of pleasure whom nothing astonishes or displeases, gallantly took her part. “But, my dear Baron, everybody goes to the Chamber of Horrors,”
said he. “Why, I myself hav
