Noll, his strong clean-cut features and his virile youth enhanced by the severe lines of the Roman helmet with its great framing steel cheek-pieces, and his well-set body and his shins glittering in the steel breast-plate and greaves of a classic warrior, sat at the outermost table of the semicircle. Beside him sat Madelaine, her white shoulders gleaming as she nestled close to him in the low-bodiced grey silk dress with great hooped skirt of Velasquez’s infantas. Babette, who sat at her other hand, had seized upon her early in the evening (taking her away without ceremony from Ffolliott, who was even then in a fuddled state from wine-bibbing), and Babette had sternly kept the girl by her side throughout the resulting riot. Indeed, the girl had not needed much compulsion, for she clung to Babette anxiously, and a little frightened. She was intoxicated with the whirl of her first ball; and she was very weary of Ffolliott. She was a little excited with wine, to which she was not accustomed. She was a little alarmed about Ffolliott--she had been flattered by his attention and proud of having caught his eyes a few days before; she had been thrilled at the prospect of the gown and still more by the gift of the silken stuff for its making--and, when she had stood in it before the mirror, she had realized her wondrous beauty, which it seemed to have suddenly enhanced and brought to view. Noll touched her hand: “Madelaine,” said he--“who gave you that dress?” “That beast!” She pointed to the drunken figure of Ffolliott, where he slumbered amongst the bottles. “He shall have it back to-morrow--I hate him,” she said passionately; and she leaned against Noll and nestled close to him. Babette leant over her and whispered to Noll: “Leave her so. When the procession forms to start for the march to the Latin Quarter, I will take her with me,” she said. And she added gently: “I will watch over her as Betty has watched over me.” She sighed sadly, and putting her elbow on the table and her chin in the pink palm of her hand, she got a-brooding. Horace Malahide, in the midst of laughter that greeted a sally of Gaston Latour’s, turned to her. He leaned over to her, and looked into her eyes: “Babette! serious! and here!” A tear fell, and she let it fall unheeding. Horace put his arm about her slender shoulders: “What, Babette! Has Noll been preaching a sermon?” She smiled sadly, stroked his cheek, and, drawing down his face to her, she kissed him. He looked such a splendid sunny fellow in his Roman armour: “No, dear heart,” she whispered--“I, Babette, have been preaching the sermon.” Horace laughed.... Thus they feasted, danced, and sang until the golden yellow lights of the great hall paled and became but flickering ghosts of flame as the sapphire shadow of the night passed away in blue and purple and lilac before the white dawn. But the students danced on into the daylight....