ribbon. The required tasks for completion of the normal school course had been done, the seal of official approval was bestowed. There were presents and congratulations, parties and sighs of relief that it was all over.
Jean sat in the throng of parents and relatives in the seats reserved for them, his eyes moist as he watched his tiny Mimi pass another milestone between that day when he had anxiously hovered outside Margot’s door and womanhood. As the music rolled its sonorous way upward, growing more and more faint as the huge chorus followed the graduates from the chapel, he lived once more the twenty short years that had so miraculously sped by on winged feet.
It was as though it were yesterday he had stood waiting eagerly for some word from Margot’s room. As he had heard her agony he had hated this newcomer who was causing his Margot to descend into the shadows. When finally he had been admitted to the room he had rushed to the bed, refusing even to look at the intruder, and had fallen on his knees weeping bitter tears of suffering and relief. He had taken a solemn oath Margot would never go through the ordeal again, an oath which later the doctor had confirmed as necessary—another child would have killed Margot. … The years of happiness the three of them had spent together came back to him. The first step, the first word, the first tooth. Long walks wandering through the old winding streets of New Orleans, little fat hands clutching his and Margot’s fingers. The first days of school. Margot’s illness and death. A sharp pain went through him that shook him like a convulsion.
“What’s the matter? Sick?” inquired Mrs. Daquin. “No—I’m all right,” he whispered, resenting the intrusion into his reverie of her who had come after Margot.
The years of indecision, days followed by lonely nights when he had sought to achieve oblivion in the mottled green wineglass. Mary. The