breezes let the half-awakened wistaria flutter outside her window, she
would blow out all her candles and lean far across the sill and stare
at her unfinished garden.

And when the house was still, oh, heart-breakingly still, she would
kneel beside the bed and whisper,

"Let's pretend! Let's pretend we're back in your room, Maman! Let's
pretend it's THAT NIGHT! Let's pretend they've just brought me in from
the garden! And that you're laughing a little because you've heard him
say,

"'Second cap I've lost here! Lost one when I was a little shaver!
There was a girl--why, girl--!'

"Oh Maman! Maman! If you'd only been there! You wouldn't have brought
me away!"

She kept the choir boy's black velvet cap in the lowest drawer of the
wardrobe. Once Margot saw it when she was tidying things.

"I don't remember this--" she murmured curiously.

And Felicia had snatched it away jealously and cuddled it under her
chin.

"Because that's mine!" she had retorted passionately, "It's mine!
Mine! And it didn't belong evaire to any other woman only me!"

And the years slipped away like Time in Maitre Guedron's song and