All along the passage naked gleams, sudden visions of white skin and wan underlinen were observable through chinks in doorways.

Two girls were making very merry, showing each other their birthmarks.

One of them, a very young girl, almost a child, had drawn her skirts up over her knees in order to sew up a rent in her drawers, and the dressers, catching sight of the two men, drew some curtains half to for decency's sake.

The wild stampede which follows the end of a play had already begun, the grand removal of white paint and rouge, the reassumption amid clouds of rice powder of ordinary attire.

The strange animal scent came in whiffs of redoubled intensity through the lines of banging doors.