There are those who are thrilled as they prowl about a city in the dead of night. Others are fascinated by the white lights that gleam before midnight. As for Petite Jeanne, she preferred the hour before dawn, when all the world is asleep. Then, like some wood nymph, she might haunt the dew-drenched park and dance to her heart’s content.
But now, as she left her home at the edge of the park to go skipping down the deserted street, a strange feeling stole over her.
“It’s the dress,” she told herself.
And so it was. She had worn that dress, no, not in America at all. And yet she had called it her lucky dress.
It had been in France. Ah yes, in France, her beloved France! That was where it had brought her good fortune. There, as a girl in her early teens, she had traveled with the Gypsies and danced with her pet bear. When she danced in this flaming gown, spinning round and round until the ruffles seemed a gay windmill wheel, how the coins had come thumping in around her tiny feet!
“But now I am fourteen no more,” she sighed. “And yet, perhaps it is a lucky dress for Petite Jeanne, even now. Who can tell?”
As she spoke these words half aloud, she cast a furtive glance down a dark alley. Instantly her mood changed. On her face came a look of horror. Her lithe limbs trembled. She seemed about to fall.
She did not fall. Instead, summoning all her courage, she went bounding down the street.
What had happened? She had seen a face, a gypsy face. It was an evil face, and one she had seen before. But not in America. In France.
She had read the look in those burning eyes. The man had seen the dress before. He could not but know the one who wore it.