When I saw my new gown all full of rolls of tissue-paper, packed by poor dear Bee, I went to my trunk and pulled out my smart Charvet tie. I handed it to her in silence.
"Take it," I said. "I hate to give it up, but you deserve it."
Bee accepted it gratefully.
"It's good of you to give it to me," she said. "You really need it more than I do, only this peculiar shade of blue is so becoming to me. I'll tell you what I'll do though," she added, heroically. "I'll lend it to you whenever you want it."
I thanked her, dressed, and then humbly trailed down to dinner in the wake of my gorgeous party.
Jimmie had engaged a table on the piazza, nearest the street and commanding the best view of all the other diners. I very willingly sat with my back to all the people, with the panorama of the Lichtenthaler Strasse passing before my eyes, and in quiet moments the sounds of the great military band playing on the promenade in front of the Conversationshaus coming to our ears.
A great deal of grandeur always makes me homesick. It isn't envy. I don't want to be a princess and have the bother of winding a horn for my outriders when I want to run to the drug-store for postage stamps, but pomp depresses me. Everybody was strange, foreign languages were pelting me from the rear, noiseless flunkies were carrying pampered lap-dogs with crests on their nasty little embroidered blankets, fat old women with epilepsy and gouty old men with scrofula, representing the aristocracy at its best, were being half carried to and from tables, and the degeneracy of noble Europe was being borne in upon my soul with a sickening force.
The purple twilight was turning black on the distant hills, and the silent stars were slowly coming into view. Clean, health-giving Baden-Baden, in the Valley of the Oos, with its beauty and its pure air, was holding out her arms to all the disease and filth that degenerate riches produce.
I wasn't exactly blue, but I was gently melancholy. Jimmie was smoking, and Bee and Mrs. Jimmie had their heads together, casting politely furtive glances at a table which held royalty. I certainly was feeling neglected.
Suddenly a voice in English at my elbow said: