Their footsteps echoed as though from afar. She felt surprisingly calm, oddly without volition, mysteriously removed from the physical space she occupied. Perhaps it was the effect of a long, fatiguing workday, but she felt as though none of this was really happening. Or—more precisely—that it was all happening to somebody else. To a character in a play perhaps; yes, it was all happening to a breathless ingenue who just happened to be named Marie-Laure. While she, the real Marie-Laure, watched the drama’s progress from a cheap hard seat in paradise, the rows at the very top of the theater. Baptiste stopped in front of an arched doorway and turned a large iron key in the lock. He opened the door, delivered an ironic bow, and—since Marie-Laure’s legs seemed to have forgotten how to move of their own accord—gave her a little shove inside a very bright space. Someone must have lit a lot of candles. Her eyes needed time to adjust from the corridor’s dimness. She thought she could discern large shapes of furniture; there was something shiny to her left—a glass-fronted bookshelf, perhaps.
