Singing with unmasked faces, they danced toward Tante Louise and
Odalie. She stood with eyes lustrous and tear-heavy, for there
in the front was Pierre, Pierre the faithless, his arms about the
slender waist of a butterfly, whose tinselled powdered hair
floated across the lace ruffles of his Empire coat.

"Pierre!" cried Odalie, softly. No one heard, for it was a mere
faint breath and fell unheeded. Instead the laughing throng
pelted her with flowers and candy and went their way, and even
Pierre did not see.

You see, when one is shut up in the grim walls of a Royal Street
house, with no one but a Tante Louise and a grim judge, how is
one to learn that in this world there are faithless ones who may
glance tenderly into one's eyes at mass and pass the holy water
on caressing fingers without being madly in love? There was no
one to tell Odalie, so she sat at home in the dull first days of
Lent, and nursed her dear dead love, and mourned as women have
done from time immemorial over the faithlessness of man. And
when one day she asked that she might go back to the Ursulines'
convent where her childish days were spent, only to go this time
as a nun, Monsieur le Juge and Tante Louise thought it quite the
proper and convenient thing to do; for how were they to know the
secret of that Mardi Gras day?


LA JUANITA

If you never lived in Mandeville, you cannot appreciate the
thrill of wholesome, satisfied joy which sweeps over its