“Come and help me, Virginie,” said Adèle. “This door is stuck. . .” One by one they tried to open it, then they all pushed together. . . Absurd though it seemed, they were locked in!

“It’s idiotic,” said Virginie. “That savage who doesn’t even know French can’t ever have seen a lock: he turned it the wrong way. He must have thought he was opening it for us.”

“We must call,” said Modeste.

Several, not yet frightened, voices, called out:

“Yoo-hoo! Monsieur! Savage! Iroquois! Darling!”

Midnight struck. The clock must have been immediately above the gallery, for its booming filled the long room, the chandelier swayed, the picture frames trembled, and, near the ceiling, a pane of glass vibrated.

“They’ll be coming to fetch us,” said Adèle. “Let’s wait.”

“You’re in a hurry, being the first; the rest of us have plenty of time,” said Blanche.

In a period of waiting interspersed with minor attacks of nerves, they heard a quarter past strike, then half past, a quarter to, and one o’clock.

“What can they be doing down there?” said Modeste. “They must have heard us, though. We can hear the music perfectly well!”

And sure enough, at irregular intervals, the highest notes of the top strings rose like spires piercing through a fog.

They called out again and again, until their faces grew red and they burst into tears.

“Let’s do something to pass the time,” said Adèle, who wanted to appear calm, and was walking to and fro in front of the portraits. “Ladies, here we are at the Louvre; this tall gentleman with the white wig and the big sword represents. . .”

“Who?” asked Irène.

“I don’t know any more!” And Adèle wept.

The portraits all had the benevolent look of old gentlemen who have just been putting little girls in the corner. They didn’t seem particularly anxious to leave. At their age people are no longer in a hurry.

One girl threw herself against the high, ironbound door and drummed on it.

As though set off by the beating of her little fists, the four quarters chimed out, and then the hour – two o’clock.

“Hell!” said Virginie. “I’m going to sleep!”

She stretched herself out on a gilded console, her feet sticking out over the end, her elbows behind her head, and her breasts in the air.

Blanche looked at her from a distance, seated on the round-topped chest, her hands slyly occupied beneath her skirt, her legs dangling.

“Ladies,” said Blanche, and she hesitated. . . “It seems to me that they are doing without us. Perhaps he needs some others. . . perhaps they have already begun!”

“Shut up you baby,” called out big Irène, erect and furious. She herself did not know how it came about that, wanting to silence her, she closed her mouth with her own.