By the Buddha shrine, festively decked with lamps, couples were pirouetting to a nigger band, while in the vicinity of the buffet, a masked adept was holding a clairaudience of a nature only to be guessed at from afar. An agile negro melody, wild rag-time with passages of almost Wesleyan hymnishness—reminiscent of Georgia gospel-missions; the eighteenth century in the Dutch East Indies—charmed and soothed the ear. Miss Sinquier jigged her foot. At their cell windows, as if riveted by the lights and commotion, leaned a few pale nuns. Poor things. The call of the world could seldom wholly be quenched! She started as a fan of seabirds’ feathers skimmed her arm. “Sylvester’s come,” Mrs. Sixsmith in passing said. “Oh!” “Aren’t you scared?” “Scared?” “You know, he always belittles people. Sylvester traduces everyone; he even crabs his daughter; he damns all he sees.” “Boom!” “How he got up those narrow stairs is a mystery to me,” Mrs. Sixsmith smiled. Miss Sinquier raised her face towards the bustling stars. An elfish horse-shoe moon, felicitously bright, struck her as auspicious. “One should bow to it,” she said. “Idolatry!” “There! look what nodding does.” A blanche bacchante with a top-knot of leaves venturesomely approached. “I’m Amethyst,” she murmured. “Indeed?” “Of _Fashion._ You are Miss Sinquier, I take it, whose costumes for Romeo—Renaissance, and ergo _à la mode_!—I so long to hear about.” Miss Sinquier dimpled. “The frocks,” she said, “some of them, will be simply killing.” “I want your first.” “Loose white.” “I suppose, _coiffé de sphinx avec un tortis de perles_?” Miss Sinquier shook her head. “No ‘Juliet-cap’ of spurious pearls for me,” she said. “You dare to abolish it?” “I do.” “You excite me.” “Unless the bloom is off the peach, Juliet needs no nets.” Miss Valer lowered discreetly her voice. “And your Romeo?” she queried. “He must make love angelically?” “He does.” “I admire enormously his friend.” “Mr. Nice?” “He has such perfect sloth. I love his lazaroni-ness, his Riva-Schiavoni-ness.... He’s very, very handsome. But, of course, it cannot last!” “No?” “Like an open rose: Have you no sympathy yourself?” “None.” “That’s a pity. An actress ... she needs a lover: a sort of husbandina, as it were ...; I always say Passion tells: _L’amour!_” Miss Sinquier threw a glance towards Mrs. Sixsmith, who stood listlessly flirting her fan. “I’m going to the buffet, child,” she said. “Then I think I’ll join you.” And drawing her friend’s arm within her own, Miss Sinquier moved away. “She must belong to more than one weekly!” she reflected. “You didn’t mention your Old Mechlin scarf, or your fox-trimmed nightie,” Mrs. Sixsmith murmured, dexterously evading the psychic freedoms of the masked adept. “Have you no shame, _Paul_?” she asked. “Paul!” Miss Sinquier wondered.