"They are going to put you in their own daughter's room, darling. She's
luckily away just now. So I think you will be all right. I, it seems, must
put up with a garret!"

"Oh, must you be far away from me?" she asked a little plaintively.

"Only for to-night, only till to-morrow, sweetheart."

And then they all began going up a winding staircase which started flush
from the wall to the left.

First came Madame Poulain, carrying a candle, then Monsieur Poulain with
his new English clients, and, last of all, the loutish lad carrying Nancy's
trunk. They had but a little way to go up the shallow slippery stairs, for
when they reached the first tiny landing Madame Poulain opened a curious,
narrow slit of a door which seemed, when shut, to be actually part of the
finely panelled walls.

"Here's my daughter's room," said the landlady proudly. "It is very
comfortable and charming."

"What an extraordinary little room!" whispered Nancy.

And Dampier, looking round him with a good deal of curiosity, agreed.

In the days when the Hotel Saint Ange belonged to the great soldier whose
name it still bears, this strange little apartment had surely been, so the
English artist told himself, a powdering closet. Even now the only outside
light and air came from a small square window which had evidently only