Mademoiselle Saucier's smile excused anything Peggy might say. Maria thought this French girl the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. The waist of her clinging white gown ended under the curve of her girlish breasts, and face, neck, and arms blossomed out with the polish of flower-petals. Around her throat she wore gold beads suspending a cross. Her dark hair, which had an elusive bluish mist, like grapes, was pinned high with a gold comb. Her oval face was full of a mature sympathy unusual in girls. Maria had thought at first she would rather be alone on the gallery, but this reposeful and tender French girl at once became a necessity to her. "Peggy," said Angelique, "I hear Jules Vigo inquiring for you in the hall." "Then I shall take to the roof," responded Peggy. "Have some regard for Jules." "You may have, but I shan't. I will not dance with a kangaroo." "Do you not promise dances ahead?" inquired Maria. "No, our mothers do not permit that," answered Angelique. "It is sometimes best to sit still and look on." "That means, Miss Jones," explained Peggy, "that she has set a fashion to give the rest of the girls a chance. I wouldn't be so mealy-mouthed about cutting them out. But Angelique has been ruined by waiting so much on her tante-gra'mere. When you bear an old woman's temper from dawn till dusk, you soon forget you're a girl in your teens." "Don't abuse the little tante-gra'mere." "She gets praise enough at our house. Mother says she's a discipline that keeps Angelique from growing vain. Thank Heaven, we don't need such discipline in our family." "It is my father's grand-aunt," explained Angelique to Maria, "and when you see her, mademoiselle, you will be surprised to find how well she bears her hundred years, though she has not been out of her bed since I can remember. Mademoiselle, I hope I never shall be very old." Maria gave Angelique the piercing stare which unconsciously belongs to large black eyes set in a hectic, nervous face. "Would you die now?" "I feel always," said the French girl, "that we stand facing the mystery every minute, and sometimes I should like to know it." "Now hear that," said Peggy. "I'm no Catholic, but I will say for the mother superior that she never put that in your head at the convent. It is wicked to say you want to die." "But I did not say it. The mystery of being without any body,--that is what I want to know. It is good to meditate on death." "It isn't comfortable," said Peggy. "It makes me have chills down my back."