"I see," said Juliet. "I must thank you for coming. As Madame knows my name, she must know a good deal about me, so her 'pictures' won't be as exciting as if I went to her a stranger. But they may be amusing." Her tone, though perfectly courteous, was meant to end the interview. Madame de Saintville rose. Juliet did the same, and rang. The moment she was alone, she ran to her bedroom and commanded Simone, who was there, to give her a hat and coat. She had said she would go "some day" to Madame Veno. But she was going now--at once--at once! CHAPTER XVI THE GREY ROOM Pat Claremanagh floated in a grey sea, under a grey sky. It seemed to him that the grey sea and sky were part of some existence after death. He vaguely remembered that he had died. If it were not for the constant, heavy pain in his head, he thought that he could recall the whole incident. Yes, that was the word--"incident". It hardly mattered now, and wasn't worth while racking his brain over. That tin hat of his was too tight--much too tight. But he was too weak to lift his hands and take it off. Strange, though, that he should be wearing it when he was dead! He must have been killed in the war. Yet, how long ago the war seemed! He had thought that a great many things had happened to him after the war. No doubt they were part of this dream--this long, floating dream--after death. But they were not grey like the leaden sea and the sky that hung so low over his head. They were beautiful, colourful things. Just straining to remember brought rainbow flashes across his brain. Out of these lights a girl's face looked at him. "Juliet!" he heard himself mutter, in a thick, tongue-tied voice. Instantly another face appeared, and blotted out that of the girl. This one was solid and very real. It bent over him in the greyness: a man's face, somehow familiar, as if he had known it long ago--long ago disliked it: a fleshy bulk surrounded with hair. He loathed it for itself, and hated it for shutting out the vision of Juliet, so he closed his eyes. For a moment consciousness died down like a fading flame. Only a vast, vague greyness was left, and the tight pain of the tin hat. But when a few moments or a few years had passed, a voice spoke. It beat upon his dulled intelligence like the strokes of a clock in the dark, telling an hour. Pat was suddenly keyed up to listening, because it was a woman's voice, and far down within himself he was aware that a woman's voice--a certain woman's voice--was what he yearned to hear. Strange! He was wide awake, and knowledge came to him that he was not dead, after all, though he might be close to death. But he did not open his eyes, because he could not bear to see the living mass of flesh and hair again. He lay quite still. And he listened. "You are always hanging over him like that whenever I turn my back!" said the woman.