She remained immersed in thoughts, her introspectiveness fanned insensibly by the floating zephyrs that spring with morning. The slight sway-sway of the trees, the awakening birds in the castle eaves, the green-veined bougainvilleas that fringed her sill--these thrilled her heart with joy. All virginal in the early dawn what magic the world possessed! Slow speeding clouds like knots of pink roses came blowing across the sky, sailing away in titanic bouquets above the town. Just such a morning should be their wedding-day! she mused, beginning lightly to apply the contents of a jar of Milk of Almonds to her breast and arms. Ah, before that Spina Christi lost its leaves, or that swallow should migrate ... that historic day would come! Troops ... hysteria ... throngs.... The Blue Jesus packed to suffocation.... She could envisage it all. And there would be a whole holiday in the Convent, she reflected falling drowsily at her bedside to her knees. “Oh! help me heaven,” she prayed, “to be decorative and to do right! Let me always look young, never more than sixteen or seventeen--at the _very_ outside, and let Yousef love me--as much as I do him. And I thank you for creating such a darling, God (for he’s a perfect dear), and I can’t tell you how much I love him; especially when he wags it! I mean his tongue.... Bless all the sisters at the Flaming-Hood--above all Sister Ursula ... and be sweet, besides, to old Jane.... Shew me the straight path! And keep me ever free from the malicious scandal of the Court: Amen.” And her orisons (ending in a brief self-examination) over, Mademoiselle de Nazianzi climbed into bed. III In the Salle de Prince or Cabinet d’Antoine, above the Café Cleopatra, Madame Wetme the wife of the proprietor, sat perusing the Court gazettes. It was not often that a _cabinet particulier_ like Antoine was disengaged at luncheon time, being as a rule reserved many days in advance, but it had been a ‘funny’ season, as the saying went, and there was the possibility that a party of late-risers might look in yet (officers, or artistes from the Halls), who had been passing a night on the ‘tiles.’ But Madame Wetme trusted not. It was pleasant to escape every now and again from her lugubrious back-drawing-room that only faced a wall, or to peruse the early newspapers without having first to wait for them. And to-day precisely was the day for the hebdomadal _causerie_ in the _Jaw-waws’ Journal_ on matters appertaining to society, signed by that ever popular diarist “Eva Schnerb.”