[ In any other configuration, perhaps Valentine—younger, not necessarily any less quick, and furthermore supposedly both more in love and more obliged to the madame than Bastien—would have beaten him to the door. But Valentine is sitting on the floor, and Bastien is only distracted by a newspaper, so after clambering through the narrow hallway so quickly that his wrists and elbows knock against the walls here and there on the way and coming to the type of sudden halt that sees his feet slide across the floor a few inches, he is the first to appear in the doorway, gripping the frame, looking for a moment ready to wrestle a knife away from someone if necessary.
It is fairly immediately apparent that it is not, but the moment he needs to consider the scene—the bird—is certainly long enough for Val to arrive, if he's coming. ]
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It is fairly immediately apparent that it is not, but the moment he needs to consider the scene—the bird—is certainly long enough for Val to arrive, if he's coming. ]