“How do you like me?” she asked.

She had on a salmon-colored broche velvet dress, with ostrich feather trimmings, and a long train.  Shoulders and bust rose as out of pink foam from the scarf-like folds of some very airy material; brilliants flashed at her breast and on her arms, the diadem was in her hair, two solitaires in the delicate little ears, a double row of pearls round her neck, and an ostrich feather fan, with enameled gold mounts, in her hand.  A superb figure!

“How beautiful!” he said, and stroked her chin fondly.  He dared not touch her cheeks, for fear of disturbing the pearl powder.  “But you look just as regal without the brilliants.”

“Flatterer!  Would you not like to come, after all?  Make haste and dress.”

He only shook his head, smiling.

“But are you not a little bit jealous, when you see me go off by myself to a ball?  I shall talk to the men, and take their arm and dance with them; the people will look at me and pay me attention—­ does it not make any difference to you?”

“No, dear heart, for I hope it will make none to you either.”

“Ah, yes—­you need have no fear on that score.  But still—­in your place—­you men, you love differently from us.  And not so well,” she added with a sigh, as Anne appeared with her fur-lined cloak, and announced that the carriage was waiting.

Some hours later Wilhelm was startled out of a deep sleep by burning kisses.  He opened his dazed eyes, and, blinking in the lamplight, saw Pilar standing by the bed as if in a cloud.  She held her great bouquet in one hand, and with the other was plucking the roses and gardenias to pieces, and strewing the petals over his head and face, as she did in the sunny afternoons at St. Valery.  She must have been engaged in this pastime for a considerable time, for the pillows and quilt were covered with flowers, and his hair was full of them.  As neither Pilar’s entry with the lamp nor the shower of blossoms had succeeded in wakening him, she had leaned over him and roused him with a kiss.

“Oh, sleepy head!” she cried, and continued to rain flowers on his dazzled, blinking eyes.  “At least you have been dreaming of me?”

“To tell the truth,” he returned, “I have not dreamed at all.”

“And I have never left off thinking about you all the time, and have longed so for you.  Look here!”

She took a lamp off the chimney-piece, and held up her ball programme before his eyes.  The blank places were filled up with pencil-writing, which looked as if it might be lines of poetry:  which in truth it was—­Spanish improvisations breathing burning love and passionate longing.  He would have understood or guessed their meaning even if Pilar had not translated them with kisses and caresses.