The costumes made a fiery rainbow, bright and strange, in the brilliant light, like the enchanted armies of a dream. He could identify groups from the tableaux vivants, theme and design repeated over and over, nymphs and coquettes of the ancien regime. Dreams for the men who owned these women, or sought to own them; a chance to see their mistresses in fantasy glory. You don't love a sang mele whose mother bargained with you for her services. You love Guenevere in her bower, you love the Fairy Queen on Midsummer's Eve. For the young girls, the girls who were here to show off their beauty to prospective protectors, the occasion was more important still.

No wonder Agnes Pellicot's face was stone when she hurried through the ballroom and then out again. No wonder there was poison in her eyes as she watched Euphrasie Dreuze trip by, an overdressed, overjeweled pink dove. Where January sat at the pianoforte he could look out through the triple doors of the ballroom to the lobby and see men and women-clothed in dreams and harried by the weight of their nondream lives-as they came and went.

Angelique's mother caught Peralta Pere as the elderly planter reentered the ballroom, asked him something anxiously. The old man's white brows pulled together and his face grew grim. Telling him about the quarrel, guessed January, and asking if he's seen either Galen or Angelique. The old planter turned and left abruptly, pausing in the wide doorway to bow to a group of chattering young girls who entered, clothed for a tableau as the Ladies of the Harim.

January returned his attention to the keys. That was one dream he preferred not to regard too near.

There were about six of them, mostly young girls- he didn't know their names. Minou had told him, of course, but even after three months back he was still unfamiliar with the teeming cast of the colored demimonde.