'
And so all again was darkness and silence, and I fell into another doze,
from which, on waking, I found that we had come to a standstill, and Madame
was standing on the low step of an open door, paying the driver. She,
herself, pulled her box and the bag in. I was too tired to care what had
become of the rest of our luggage.
I descended, glancing to the right and left, but there was nothing visible
but a patch of light from the lamps on a paved ground and on the wall.
We stepped into the hall or vestibule, and Madame shut the door, and I
thought I heard the key turn in it. We were in total darkness.
'Where are the lights, Madame--where are the people?' I asked, more awake
than I had been.
''Tis pass three o'clock, cheaile, bote there is always light here.' She
was groping at the side; and in a moment more lighted a lucifer match, and
so a bedroom candle.
We were in a flagged lobby, under an archway at the right, and at the left
of which opened long flagged passages, lost in darkness; a winding stair,
barely wide enough to admit Madame, dragging her box, led upward under a
doorway, in a corner at the right.
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