No; the wholly heartbroken Jacques was not pleased. Not at all! Neither the rank odour of decay nor the Red Chamber, remembering its bloody history impressed her, and it was all because he wasn’t there. Intellectually, she realized that Julius Johnson, the barely quixotic, constant man who had taught her how to feel, had a full life in which he was drinking himself to death in the company of the hateful Holly, and he could not be expected to hold any consideration for the pleasure of one immortal girl. Intellectually, she knew this. And yet…
   Truly, it had been a most avian day when father had brought him to her attention.
   At that moment an abrupt fanfare from the long-silent trumpets shattered her composure into a million quixotic pieces! She shut her eyes tight for one moment of silent prayer. Surely it could not be — but it was! At the door, the untamable, burning, romantic and masculine face she had come to know so well! “Even the crafty Ronnie couldn’t keep me from you,” he intoned while he once again began to woo her with the sensual voice of his Stradivarius. “I need you, my perfect little carrot!”
   Just then, as it dawned on her that her days of loneliness were over, she knew that life without him was unthinkable, if not amoral, inchoate. Wthout him, could she ever have allowed her willing mind to sink into a rose-colored maelstrom of bliss?