and mockingly.
"What, I go to one of your conferences! Not I, _cher poete_. Keep your
mysteries for your youthful disciples." She looked at Ermentrude, who
did not lower her eyes--she was triumphant now. Perhaps _he_ might say
something before they parted. He did not, but the princess did.
"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 Keroulans 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 hotel.
II
It was the garden of a poet, she declared, as, with the Keroulans and
her aunt, Ermentrude sat and slowly fanned herself, watching the Bois de
Boulogne, which foamed like a cascade of green opposite this pretty
little house in Neuilly. The day was warm and the drive, despite the
shaded, watered avenues, a dusty, fatiguing one. Mrs. Sheldam had,
doubtfully, it is true, suggested the bourgeois comfort of the
Metropolitain, but she was frowned on by her enthusiastic niece. What!
ride underground in such weather? So they arrived at the poet's not in
the best of humour, for Mrs. Sheldam had quietly chidden her charge on
the score of her "flightiness." These foreign celebrities were well
enough in their way, but--! And now Ermentrude, instead of looking
Octave Keroulan in the face, preferred the vista of the pale blue sky,
awash with a scattered, fleecy white cloud, the rolling edges of which
echoed the dazzling sunshine. The garden was not large, its few trees
were of ample girth, and their shadows most satisfying to eyes weary of
the city's bright, hard surfaces. There were no sentimental plaster
casts to disturb the soft harmonies of this walled
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