veils over their faces and others “made up,” and all sorts. It was a scandal for the whole street. Prokop paid for the new quarter himself and in return obtained the key of the flat.
Inside there was the musty smell of rooms which have long been unoccupied and from which almost all life has departed. Only now did Prokop realize that he had wrestled with his fever amidst the most extraordinary luxury. Everywhere Bokhara or Persian carpets, on the walls tapestries and nude studies, a divan, arm-chairs, the dressing-table of a soubrette, the bathroom of a high-class prostitute, a mixture of luxury and vulgarity, lewdness and dissoluteness. And here, in the middle of all these abominations, she had stood pressing the package to her bosom, her clear, woeful eyes cast on the ground. And now, my God! she raised them in brave devotion. . . . What on earth could she have thought of him when she found him in this den? He must find her at least . . . at least to return her her money; even if it was for nothing else, for nothing more important . . . it was absolutely necessary to find her!
That is easy enough to say, but how? Prokop bit his lips in obstinate reflection. If he only knew where to look for George, he said to himself; finally he came upon a pile of correspondence which was waiting there for Thomas. Most of it consisted, naturally, of commercial letters, obviously chiefly bills. Then a few private letters which he turned over and sniffed with some hesitation. Perhaps in one of them there was a clue to his whereabouts, an address or something of the sort, which
