"You are," I said, "you _are_--you--you--dragging an ancient name
through the dust--you ..."

I forget what I said. But I remember, "dragging an ancient name." It
struck me, at the time, by its forlornness, as part of an appeal to her.
It was so pathetically tiny a motive, so out of tone, that it stuck in
my mind. I only remember the upshot of my speech; that, unless she
swore--oh, yes, swore--to have done with de Mersch, I would denounce her
to my aunt at that very moment and in that very house.

And she said that it was impossible.




CHAPTER THIRTEEN


I had a sense of walking very fast--almost of taking flight--down a long
dim corridor, and of a door that opened into an immense room. All that I
remember of it, as I saw it then, was a number of pastel portraits of
weak, vacuous individuals, in dulled, gilt, oval frames. The heads stood
out from the panelling and stared at me from between ringlets, from
under powdered hair, simpering, or contemptuous with the expression that
must have prevailed in the _monde_ of the time before the Revolution. At
a great distance, bent over account--books and pink cheques on the flap
of an escritoire, sat my aunt, very small, very grey, very intent on her
work.

The people who built these rooms must have had some property of the