Prologue

A man sat in the parlour of his house one evening, taking his tea. The room was small, but comfortable, with a fireplace at one end, a sofa facing it some feet back, a low table in front of it. The tea things were positioned to a nicety there, and two gloriously comfortable red armchairs reposed on either side of the fireplace. It was one of these two chairs, the right one, to be precise, on which the man was seated. His companion, a young girl of twenty-six or so, sat in the left one. Her wrists were tied to its arms.

The girl, twisting her wrists around inside the well-made rope, sighed in apparent boredom. "I have never accused you of being normal, Monseigneur," she said, "but I believe you have carried your eccentricity to... I believe I shall call it a straining point."

"No, you have never called me normal, but you have accused me of something far worse."

"My dear Monseigneur, what could be worse than normal?"

"I believe you will recall having called me a good man on more than one occasion, despite my attempts to convince you that I am nothing of the sort."

"Oh," the girl said, trying to quell the fear that had been slowly building in her for the past half an hour. "Is that what you are doing?" she said heartily. "Attempting to convince me you are not good?"

"No, my dear. I am succeeding."

The girl attempted to laugh.