There was one "pretend" she could only do when she was alone. She did not try it often. Sometimes on the spring nights when the tender breezes let the half-awakened wistaria flutter outside her window, she would blow out all her candles and lean far across the sill and stare at her unfinished garden. And when the house was still, oh, heart-breakingly still, she would kneel beside the bed and whisper, "Let's pretend! Let's pretend we're back in your room, Maman! Let's pretend it's THAT NIGHT! Let's pretend they've just brought me in from the garden! And that you're laughing a little because you've heard him say, "'Second cap I've lost here! Lost one when I was a little shaver! There was a girl--why, girl--!' "Oh Maman! Maman! If you'd only been there! You wouldn't have brought me away!" She kept the choir boy's black velvet cap in the lowest drawer of the wardrobe. Once Margot saw it when she was tidying things. "I don't remember this--" she murmured curiously. And Felicia had snatched it away jealously and cuddled it under her chin. "Because that's mine!" she had retorted passionately, "It's mine! Mine! And it didn't belong evaire to any other woman only me!" And the years slipped away like Time in Maitre Guedron's song and every year the garden grew a little lovelier and every year Felicia grew a little more sedate and every year Piqueur and the Major grew "too old." Until Piqueur no longer left his fireside and as for the Major--well, there came a day when the Major fell prostrate by the staircase and lay for a long time breathing very hard. That was a terrifying time until Bele brought a doctor from the village. He was a good little doctor, round faced and pink cheeked, quite the youngest thing, save Bele, that Felicia had seen in many years. And he pulled the Major back to something like life--a something that played chess very slowly and sometimes called Felicia Octavia and sometimes querulously murmured, "Louisa, I forbid you to go to Paris--it's a bad business--" She "pretended" nothing in these days, simply went gravely about the myriad tasks that awaited her, directing the stupid Bele, helping the white haired Margot, sitting proudly at the head of the table smiling across at a black eyed old gentleman who muttered and fumbled peevishly at his food or quite forgot to eat at all until she coaxed him. She always smiled at dinner; one should smile at dinner even though one feels very, very sad. And after dinner one must make an attempt to give a querulous old man his game of chess. And let his cold lips caress one's hand when Bele comes to put him to bed. But after that, especially if it was spring, she would wander restlessly in her garden or pace back and forth in her high ceilinged bed chamber. And sometimes she would kneel beside her window and murmur a little prayer--she didn't know it was a prayer, it was just a scrap of something she remembered--