"Beware, young America, of my Superman! You remember the story of the
ape with the mirror!"

Ermentrude flushed with mortification. This princess was decidedly rude
at times. But she kept her temper and thanked the lady for a unique
evening. Her exquisite youth and grace pleased the terrible old woman,
who then varied her warning.

"Beware," she called out in comical accents as they slowly descended the
naked marble staircase, "of the Sleeping Princess!"

The American girl looked over her shoulder.

"I don't think your Superman has a mirror at all."

"Yes, but his princess holds one for him!" was the jesting reply.

The carriage door slammed. They rolled homeward, and Ermentrude suffered
from a desperate sense of the unachieved. The princess had been
impertinent, the Kéroulans rather banal. Mrs. Sheldam watched her
charge's face in the intermittent lights of the Rue de Rivoli.

"I think your poet a bore," she essayed. Then she shook her
husband--they had reached their hôtel.


II

It was the garden of a poet, she declared, as, with the Kéroulans and
her aunt, Ermentrude sat and slowly fanned herself, watching the Bois de