He felt that the dressing rooms were empty,
the corridors deserted; not a soul was there; not a sound broke the
stillness, while through the square windows on the level of the stairs
the pale November sunlight filtered and cast yellow patches of light,
full of dancing dust, amid the dead, peaceful air which seemed to
descend from the regions above.
He was glad of this calm and the silence, and he went slowly up, trying
to regain breath as he went, for his heart was thumping, and he was
afraid lest he might behave childishly and give way to sighs and tears.
Accordingly on the first-floor landing he leaned up against a wall--for
he was sure of not being observed--and pressed his handkerchief to his
mouth and gazed at the warped steps, the iron balustrade bright with the
friction of many hands, the scraped paint on the walls--all the squalor,
in fact, which that house of tolerance so crudely displayed at the pale
afternoon hour when courtesans are asleep. When he reached the second
floor he had to step over a big yellow cat which was lying curled up on
a step. With half-closed eyes this cat was keeping solitary watch over
the house, where the close and now frozen odors which the women nightly
left behind them had rendered him somnolent.
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