Every Wednesday there was a ball in the great ballroom of the Kurhaus, but it was a very mixed company that attended. Every Saturday, on the other hand, there was held in the small halls a “_réunion dansante_” to which one had to procure cards of invitation, and in which there came together only the élite of the outsiders and the leaders of local society. Lady Tancred meant to take her daughter to one of these. Our mothers were urged to come too, and to bring us. “Ridiculous!” said they; “such children at a grown people’s ball! It’s out of the question.” But the Tancreds kept soliciting them, and we plied them with the most urgent entreaties, till the scruples gave way. Why, were we being treated as children here at all? Were we not taken to the Kursaal, to the music in the park? did not all the people, especially the young gentlemen, behave toward us as if we were grown up? Oh well, then, so be it; these little _réunions_ are not formal balls anyhow, and if it gives the children such very great pleasure.... Meanwhile the great undertaking had fallen off somewhat. The winnings were gone again. Some blunder had been made, against which they would be on their guard in the future—you see it is different here from what it is at home—one gets carried away and plays without regard to the system; such a thing must not happen again. The thing to do now was, first rest a few days, and then begin at the beginning again and adhere strictly to the rules. The preparations for the _réunion_ were made. We were to wear misty white dresses, and for ornaments—the idea originated with us children—a wreath of cornflowers in our hair, a garland of cornflowers outlining the top of the corsage, and the overskirt caught up with little bunches of cornflowers. In the villa next door lived a florist; the order was given to him. I can still remember how I felt in the greenhouse where the florist took our order: how damp and warm it smelt there, how the red and white and yellow blossoms flamed round about—but loveliest among all the gay flower-mosaic the blue of a mass of cornflowers. Would we not look like elves of the field, so fresh and unassuming and poetic?—And that in the brightly lighted ballroom! We should make a sensation, and we were blissful—blissful as ever silly girls can be before their first ball, which they really have not yet any proper right to attend. But were we not exceptional creatures altogether, born to exceptional fates? If the million-factory did go wrong, what of it? The cornflowers would be a more original adornment than diamonds, and happiness did not lie in the external world and its treasures; it lay in us, in our buoyant sense of youth, in our—let me say it—immeasurable conceit. The one the greatest female dramatist of the future; the other, if nothing else, at any rate a beauty thronged with adorers—Oh, the silly, silly girls!