Paris was unusually still this afternoon, so still that one seemed to hear the twilight falling upon the world in blue waves of silence. Usually at this hour the _salon_ was crowded with voluble women drinking tea or with men sipping port wine and nibbling ratafias. It was lucky that this afternoon when she had a headache they should all have gone so early. What was the time? Only a little after four. She ought to have told François that she would not be at home to anybody else who called. She made a movement to ring the bell; but even so slight an action was seeming a bore, and she sank back again in the arm-chair, telling herself that François, most accomplished of servants, would know instinctively that she desired to receive no more this afternoon. She hoped that the headache would vanish before dinner, because it was so difficult to have a satisfactory _séance_ unless one was feeling in just the right mood to concentrate. Madame de Sarlovèze had been so emphatic about the abilities of the new crystal-gazer who with remarkable predictions of her clients' futures and even more remarkable knowledge of her clients' pasts had deeply impressed all Paris this autumn. The success of a personality like this Sicilian fortune-teller helped one to realize that the war was over. Not that fortune-tellers had not flourished during the war. Indeed, they could never have been so prosperous; but it was like old times to hear one's friends talking about the latest crystal-gazer, the latest dancer, the latest tenor, the latest nerve-doctor as if until one had fallen in with the fashion and succumbed to their performances one was hopelessly _démodée_. From some shadowy corner of the inner _salon_ a Siamese cat advanced with outwardly an air of the most supercilious indifference, which was contradicted by miaows of greeting that were to the miaows of ordinary cats as a violoncello to a violin. "Pierrette!" Mary exclaimed gladly. The small cat flirted her kinked tail in response, but lest she might seem to have displayed too much dependence upon a poor human being at once sat down and began to clean a slim chocolate paw. "Pierrette! Aren't you coming to talk to me?" The answering miaow was almost too deep for a violoncello's capacity. Indeed to call it a miaow was an insult to the jungle noise it was. "The people have gone, Pierrette. Do come and talk to me. I'll give you all my attention." Pierrette looked steadily at her friend from large round eyes, the pupils of which distended by the approach of night glowed in the firelight. Presently she drew near to Mary's chair, upon the brocade of which she defiantly sharpened her claws before jumping up with a trill on the black silk lap to which she had been invited. Here she settled down couchant to regard the fire. "Dear little cat," Mary murmured.