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 fell they would fall inward, burying under the weight of stones the secret of the creation of this palace, if there were a secret. Again, it was diverting to become acquainted with the baroque harmonies of the Prefettura and Seminario, reared in a stone of a golden hue, so soft when quarried that it might be carved into the most fantastic shapes before, in a few days, it hardened, in the Apulian town of Lecce which, she noted with a smile, was famous for the manufacture of that essential eighteenth century commodity, castrati, an industry as much frowned on legally in that epoch as bootlegging is today. There was always, Campaspe still believed, something left to think about.

Moreover, as the day wore on, other distractions presented themselves so that, as yet, there seemed to be no occasion for her to apply to Swamis, Coués, or Freuds. She recognized the fact, however, that the world in general, and New York in particular, would lose a great deal of their savour if there were not some persons who continued to subscribe to the panaceas advocated by these hierophants, performing all the prescribed rites with due solemnity. They were an essential part of the human circus and she knew that she would miss them if they were absent. Nevertheless, what she craved most in her present mood was a certain wholesome sanity, and where could she ever hope to find that again? Was there, she wondered, no shadow of it left on this