“Speech! Speech!”
Speech? Her head was in a wild whirl.
Then her eyes fell upon the clock. “Listen!” She held up a hand for silence.
“Listen!” Her voice rose like a captain’s shouting a command. A hush, the hush that can come only at two in the morning, fell over the group. But into that hush there came no unusual sound, only the distant chimes heralding the hour of two in the morning.
“My hour of enchantment!” Jeanne sighed blissfully.
“And now you listen!” It was Florence who spoke. “I have heard you say that many times. What do you mean—your hour of enchantment?”
“All right, I’ll tell you.” The little French girl’s face beamed. “Long ago a gypsy woman, a very old and very wise fortune teller, said to me, ‘Your hour of enchantment is two o’clock in the morning.’
“You too,” she hurried on, “each one of you has an enchanted hour—an hour when wonderful things will come to you; good fortune, riches, a proposal, marriage, all these will come to you on that enchanted hour.
“It is true!” She was deeply in earnest, this little French girl, so sincerely in earnest that she did not realize that she was about to betray a secret.
“You think it strange that my enchanted hour is two in the morning when most good people are in their beds.