Thus my winter was far from a tranquil one, and before it was half over I had three grey hairs. Honey and wormwood, happiness and heartburn, reconciliations and frantic little tiffs, carried us blithely on to Mi-Carême, when things reached a crisis.... Mi-Carême fell midway in March that year: a velvety, sweet, sunlit day, Spring stirring in her sleep. P’tit-Bleu and I had spent the day together, in the crowded, crowded streets. We had visited the Boulevards, of course, to watch the triumph of the Queen of Washerwomen; we had pelted everybody with confetti; and we had been pelted so profusely in return, that there were confetti in our boots, in our pockets, down our necks, and numberless confetti clung in the black meshes of P’tit-Bleu’s hair, like little pink, blue, and yellow stars. But all day long something in P’tit-Bleu’s manner, something in her voice, her smile, her carriage, had obscurely troubled me; something not easy to take hold of, something elusive, unformulable, but disquieting. A certain indefinite aloofness, perhaps; an accentuated independence; as if she were preoccupied with secret thoughts, with intentions, feelings, that she would not let me share. And then, at night, we went to the Opera Ball. P’tit-Bleu was dressed as an Odalisque: a tiny round Turkish cap set jauntily sidewise on her head, a short Turkish jacket, both coat and jacket jingling and glittering with sequins; a long veil of gauze, wreathed like a scarf round her shoulders; then baggy Turkish trousers of blue silk, and scarlet Turkish slippers. Oh, she was worth seeing; I was proud to have her on my arm. Her black crinkling hair, her dancing eyes, her eager face and red smiling mouth—the Sultan himself might have envied me such a houri. And many, in effect, were the envious glances that we encountered, as we made our way into the great brilliantly lighted ball-room, and moved hither and thither among the Harlequins and Columbines, the Pierrots, the Toréadors, the Shepherdesses and Vivandières, the countless fantastic masks, by whom the place was peopled. P’tit-Bleu had a loup of black velvet, which sometimes she wore, and sometimes gave to me to carry for her. I don’t know when she looked the more dangerous, when she had it on, and her eyes glimmered mysteriously through its peepholes, or when she had it off.