guets was typically French and typically suburban; but
where it differed from thousands of houses of the same type, dotted round
in the countrysides within easy reach of Paris, was that it was let each
year to a different set of tenants.

In Sylvia Bailey's eyes the queer little place lacked all the elements
which go to make a home; and, sitting there, in that airless, darkened
dining-room, she wondered, not for the first time, why the Wachners chose
to live in such a comfortless way.

She glanced round her with distaste. Everything was not only cheap, but
common and tawdry. Still, the dining-room, like all the other rooms in
the chalet, was singularly clean, and almost oppressively neat.

There was the round table at which she and Anna Wolsky had been so kindly
entertained, the ugly buffet or sideboard, and in place of the dull
parquet floor she remembered on her first visit lay an ugly piece of
linoleum, of which the pattern printed on the surface simulated a red
and blue marble pavement.

Once more the change puzzled her, perhaps unreasonably.

At last Sylvia got up from the hard cane chair on which she had been
sitting.

There had come over her, in the half-darkness, a very peculiar
sensation--an odd feeling that there was something alive in the room. She
looked down, half expecting to see some small animal crouching under the
table, or hiding by the walnut-wood buffet behind her.

But, no; nothing but the round table, and the six chairs stiffly placed
against the wall, met her eyes. And yet, still that feeling that there
was in the room some sentient creature besides herself persisted.

She opened the door giving into the hall, and walked through the short
passage which divided the house into two portions, into the tiny "salon."

Here also the closed shutters gave the room a curious, eerie look
of desolate greyness. But Sylvia's eyes, already accustomed to the
half-darkness next door, saw everything perfectly.

The little sitting-room looked mean and shabby. There was not a flower,
not even a book or a paper, to relieve its prim ugliness. The only
ornaments were a gilt clock on the mantelpiece, flanked with two sham
Empire candelabra. The shutters were fastened closely, and the room was
dreadfully hot and airless.

Once more Sylvia wondered why the Wachners preferred to live in this
cheerless way, with a servant who only came for a few hours each day,
rather than at an hotel or boarding-house.

And th