She shuddered at the thought of having lived for months with an open door leading to her bedroom.

She debated with herself whether to stick her key in that door and leave it there permanently, while she herself sought another sleeping-room, or to yield to the charm of her unbidden guest and acquiesce in her plan of exchanging confidential visits.

The strangeness and mystery of it all, and still more the hope that her neighbour might let fall an occasional word concerning Manasseh, at length prevailed over her fears and scruples, and determined her to receive the other's advances.
On the following evening she gave her servants permission to go to the theatre,--the play representing the defeat of the Austrian army by the Italians,--while she herself, after having her samovar and other tea-things brought to her room, took up her mandolin and struck a few chords on its strings.

The reclining Sappho answered her, and a few minutes later there came a knock on the back of the fireplace.
"Come in!" The phoenix rose, and the fair Cyrene appeared, this time in full toilet, as for a fashionable call, her hair dressed in the English mode, a lace shawl falling over her pink silk gown, from beneath which one got an occasional glimpse of the richly embroidered underskirt and a pair of little feet encased in high-heeled shoes.
"You were going out ?" asked the princess.
"I was coming to see you." "Did you know I was waiting for you ?" "I told you yesterday I should come, and I knew you were expecting me from your sending your servants away to the theatre." "And you knew that too ?" "Yes, because they took mine along with them.

So here we are all alone by ourselves." The consciousness of being the only living creatures in a whole house has a delicious charm, fraught with mystery and awe, for two young women.