The coin went in with a click; it was as if the massive machine were cunningly putting itself on guard.

André Marcueil seized the sort of iron armchair by both its arms and, with no apparent effort, pulled:

“Come, madame,” he said.

His phrase ended in a terrible crashing of twisted steel, the broken springs writhed on the ground as if they were the beast’s entrails; the dial grimaced and its needle raced madly around two or three times like a hunted creature looking for a way of escape.

“Let’s move along,” said the general “The dog! Just to impress me he picked a worn-out instrument.”

They were both very lucid now, although Marcueil had not thought to drop the two handles, which were like burnished cestus. They went out of the enclosure and up the avenue, toward the coupé.

Dawn was breaking, like the light from another world.

A Little Slip of a Girl

A LITTLE SLIP OF A GIRL

A woman coming in makes the same rustling sound as one undressing.

The next morning Miss Elson called on André Marcueil.

He had just had his breakfast, in secret, since, like a desperate consumptive or a healthy savage, he followed a diet of raw mutton. He had then proceeded to his complicated ablutions, such as might have been practiced by an implicit believer in the method of the Abbé Kneipp4 . . . or by a professional prostitute. He was still swathed in moist linen, over which he wore a sort of monk’s robe of coarse wool, a hygienic garment that he called his “Spanish cloak.”

It was then that Ellen appeared.

An increasingly acute humming sound had announced her arrival. It sounded like a steamer’s siren, and all the time it continued Marcueil thought he was hearing the word “siren” in his ears.

A monstrous automobile – the unique racing model recently invented by Arthur Gough and propelled by explosive mixtures the secret of which belonged to William Elson – the same vehicle in which Elson and his daughter had left on the preceding evening, but this time piloted by Ellen alone – had rushed headlong, as fleet as a hippogriff, toward the flight of steps leading to the entrance.

Siren: the name had been suggested to Marcueil by the whirring of the motor, which had made the windowpanes of Lurance vibrate. The pink plush driver’s mask Ellen wore gave her head a curiously birdlike appearance, and Marcueil remembered that the real sirens of the fable were not sea monsters, but supernatural sea birds.

She removed her mask with a gesture like a man’s salute.