BEHIND THE HEAVY CURTAINS, all is quiet. Madeleine pauses, there at the end of the passageway, and listens: where is the sound of Charlottes bow, tapping absently against the floor, and the murmur of Marguerite's disparagements? The swish of stockinged feet, the clanking of canisters against the little wagon, and the sigh of the drawing-room windows being pulled shut after the last cigarette has been flicked onto the lawn? The secret, languid sound of the performers laughing, unobserved?
Madeleine had hoped to burst through the curtains, ablaze with her anger, frightening the others and making them feel small. They would freeze; they would stare at her. They would be struck, as if with Marguerite's wooden sword, by the sight of Madeleine, enraged.
So she had thought as she came rushing down the hall. But now she halts, uncertain, thwarted by this peculiar silence. Not a silence, exactly; a peculiar hush: for it does not sound as if the drawing room is empty, but rather that those inside have grown suddenly quiet. Madeleine gets the uncomfortable feeling that were she to enter, were she to throw back the drapery and storm through, it would be an intrusion.