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Listening to the applause, seeing her sister’s daughter start toward the stage, Dolly felt a sudden longing.

By rights, it oughta be Eve sitting here, not me. She would’ve been so proud of Annie… .

Dolly’s eyes filled with tears. Like a movie fade, the room blurred, and Annie seemed to take on a starry corona, red sparks glinting in her hair, the folds of her dress spilling pockets of light as she moved forward, chin high, to claim her prize.

Then, across the room, seated at the table nearest the stage, Dolly spotted Henri. He’d come. He was here! She wanted to jump up on her chair and wave at him. Even from a distance, she could see that he’d aged-his hair, even his mustache, more gray than she remembered-but, Lord, how good to see him! She felt her whole being lift up, like in a dream when you feel yourself flying like a bird. Except this was the real thing.

Their eyes met. Henri didn’t smile, or wave. He just

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stared, and though he hadn’t moved a muscle, she felt as if he were rushing toward her. Then she saw he was pointing at the Girod display table right near her. Why? And she saw … an elaborate model of some sort she hadn’t noticed before. She half rose to get a better look … and, oh, blessed Lord … reeds, lilies, a lake, a boat, a waterfall cascading down … why, it had to be …

The Bois de Boulogne. That first day they’d spent rowing. He’d remembered!

Dolly felt an exquisite heat spread through her.

He still loves me.

Then Dolly turned and saw that Felder had gotten up and was heading toward the exit. A short while ago she’d seen him duck out to the men’s room, so this time he had to be leaving. Annie would be devastated!

He doesn’t know me from a hole in the ground, but maybe if I sweet-talk him … tell him how terrific she is … he’ll see what an advantage she’d be for Felder’s… .

Dolly, Tom between Henri and wanting to help her niece, hesitated only a moment before leaping from her chair and following Felder into the lobby. Luckily, she caught sight of him as he was disappearing down the wide marble staircase that led to the main floor below.

Anxious now, Dolly dashed after him, holding onto the white marble banister as she lurched down the stairs, cursing herself for having worn such high heels. She imagined herself catching up with Felder … and then what? What exactly was she going to say?

Oh, she’d think of something. Some way of convincing him he’d be making a huge mistake if he passed up this deal.

Dolly was nearly out of breath by the time she reached the ornate lobby with its cascading chandelier and huge Chinese tub bursting with tiger lilies, gladiolus, delphiniums. But where had Felder gotten to?

Not waiting for the doorman, she pushed open the heavy glass door and ducked outside. Once again, she caught sight of Felder… he was crossing the street toward a stretch limousine idling at the opposite curb. With

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scarcely a glance in either direction, Dolly dashed after him.

“Mr. Felder!”

Too late, she heard the squeal of brakes, and saw glaring headlights looming before her.

Something was slamming into her; she felt herself crumpling, the sky tipping over onto her head like a bucket of dirty water-a film of gray through which just a few faint stars poked through.

Disjointedly, she thought, How silly of me.

Jaywalking. How many times had both her driver and Henri warned her?

Lord, but it hurt … hurt so bad.

But now a bright white light was seeping into her head, making everything look fuzzy, blocking out her pain, making even the rumble and screech of traffic fade. And, oddly, Dolly wasn’t scared anymore. She felt as if here, now, this, was where she’d been heading all along … ever since the moment she’d let that hateful letter slip from her fingers into that mailbox.

But she so wished that she’d been able to tell Henri how much she still loved him … and always would… .

Lying on the pavement, her legs bent at odd angles she seemed unable to set right, Dolly peered up at the blurry sea of faces that had appeared above her. Some seemed to be shouting for help, but she couldn’t hear their words. She could only see their mouths flapping open and shut amid the cacophony of police whistles, traffic noises, the shrieking of sirens.

A chill sank into her bones like silt settling along the bottom of a creekbed. She felt herself slipping … slipping away from the jangling noises … her gaze was drawn upward by a peculiar light that had appeared in the buzzing darkness.

The sun glinting on a wave as it combed toward shore.

The wave broke. A young girl’s delighted laughter rang in her ears. She could smell salt air, hear seagulls.

Dolly saw her sister: running along the beach at Santa Monica, her lithe body outlined in gold by the setting

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sun, her hair fluttering, the water rushing in, swirling about her long slender legs.

Evie … you dope … you forgot to take your stockings off!

1 don’t care! Oh, Dor, stop being such a stickin-themud. Look, we made it! We’re here! Califor-ni-yay. Can you believe it? Oh, God, I think I up and died in my sleep last night. Is this heaven?

They’re your last pair. If you ruin them, you can’t have mine.

Doris Burdock, you sound just like Mama-Jo. Look around you! Look at this! Sand! Have you ever seen so much sand? I feel like taking off all my clothes and digging myself a great big hole.

Well, just don’t expect me to dig you out of it. I didn’t ride a bus all the way from Kentucky just to build sand castles. Will you just look at that … you’ve got a run already. Eighty-nine cents a pair. Now just how do you plan on getting to be a movie star looking like something the cat dragged in?

Oh, Dor, stop fussing. We’re here! Can’t you just taste it on the tip of your tongue? Can’t y ou feel it? All that other stuff, it’s all in the past. Clemscott’s just a bad dream. And I’m not ever goin’ back, hear? Not ever. Not even in my mind. From here on, I’m somebody. I’m a …

“Star,” Dolly whispered, and felt herself sink down, the warm sand closing over her head.

Lilies? An enormous bouquet of them, stiff and white as candles, swam into her view. In the light seeping through the shuttered blinds, they now seemed to glow. Sweet … they smelled too sweet … artificial somehow, like candy roses on a wedding cake. But lilies were for funerals… .

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Dolly tried to press her eyes open more widely, but it felt as if sandbags were sitting on her eyelids. She couldn’t manage more than thin slits. Her whole body, in fact, felt like after a day at the beach, hot and itchy all over, sand gritting in every crevice.

“I’m not …” She started to say she wasn’t dead, not yet, that the lilies didn’t belong here, but the only sound she could make was a gargled croak.

Out of one slitted eye, she saw a shadowy form unfold itself from a darkened corner. Then arms were encircling her, lips pressing against her cheek, her forehead. She closed her eyes; the effort of keeping them open was too great, and anyway, she didn’t need eyes to know it was Henri. She could feel him, his warmth, his solidness, the roughness of his cheek, the prickling of his mustache. His clothes stank of being slept in, and of too many Gauloises-but, Lord Almighty, when had she ever smelled anything so wonderful?

Maybe she had died … and this was heaven.

“Henri?” she croaked.

“Dolly … oh, ma poup้e …” His voice, too, sounded hoarse.

Dolly tried to lift her arms-one of them appeared to be hooked up to an IV line-to embrace him, but the effort sent a rocket of pain exploding through her ribcage. She could manage only the smallest of movements. Even so, a dull hammering moved up from her wrists, spreading through her.

“Non …” She could feel Henri lightly pressing her shoulders into the mattress. “You must not move. It is better if you remain still.”

“Where … ?” She opened her eyes, and he came into focus. She looked into a pair of slate-colored eyes redrimmed with tiredness, and bright with tears.

“Lenox Hill. It is a good hospital, they tell me. Now, you must not worry yourself.”

“How long have I been here?”

“Since yesterday night.”

“And now? What time’s it now?”

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She saw him glance at his watch. “Half past five. The sun is nearly setting.”

“You mean all this time I’ve been out like a light?”

“You do not remember last night, your niece being here?”

“Annie?”

“Yes. And Laurel, too … she telephoned last night two times, and came to see you this morning. You opened your eyes, but we could not know if you saw her. I had so much fear, enormous … but now, the doctors, they have reassured me. They can repair you.”

“Seeing those flowers, I thought at first maybe I’d died.” Dolly forced a weak smile. “But nobody dead could hurt this much.”

“You have good fortune. Four broken ribs and a bad concussion, very bad, but you are strong. You will get better.”

“Then how come I feel like fifty miles of bad road?”

Henri chuckled. “It’s good. If you can joke, that is the best sign.”

“Oh, forget it. Oooh!” Her legs, as she tried to shift them, ached something fierce.

She clutched hold of Henri’s hand as wave after wave of dizziness spiraled through her. The flowers on the table beside her bed appeared now to be swaying, as if blown by a strong breeze.

“Lilies,” she slurred, knowing it had to be sedatives making her act and feel this woozy-as if her head had come unpinned from the rest of her. “They’ve got no color. I can’t abide lilies. …”

“Oui, ma poup้e, Mr. Felder does not know you as I do. When we are married you shall have roses, bright red and yellow ones … and you shall wear red …” His voice caught, and his eyes brimmed. “A red dress, like the one you were wearing that first day you came into my shop.”

What was he saying? Was it the drugs and her pain making her head so foggy she couldn’t hear straight? Was he really asking her to marry him?

“Henri … are you …?”

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“No, please … let me say it. I know I have waited much too long for this … and you may no longer wish to hear it. But, yes, I wish you to become my wife. I have quit Girod’s … and that means you must quit it also. Do you think we two could ever start again, from the beginning?”

His face was grim, the lines about his eyes and mouth more pronounced than she remembered from years ago. He looked weary … -and more than a little scared. As if he couldn’t bring himself to trust in the preciousness of this great gift he was holding out to her.

Dolly now was struggling against the tide of wooziness threatening to swamp her … struggling to tell Henri what she’d been waiting six years to say. So much. She wanted to tell him how no other man-and she’d tried a few on for size-had ever measured up to him. And how it didn’t matter that they’d have to start over from scratch; she’d love every minute of it. And, yes, she wanted him … in her apartment, in her bed, his toothbrush parked next to hers in the medicine chest, his robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door, even the acrid smell of his Gauloises.

Her heart was thumping like crazy, each thump bringing with it a wallop of pain, but that didn’t matter. Her old body would heal. Her head would eventually stop spinning. What mattered now was getting it straight, getting the words out …

But all Dolly could say was, “Try me.”

Ihree days later, Dolly was sitting up in bed, sipping a ginger ale and wondering if her being impatient as hell to get out of this depressing place meant she was getting better, when Annie walked in.

“Hi,” her niece greeted her, depositing several glossy magazines on the table beside Dolly’s bed before dropping a kiss onto her forehead. She wore cream-colored gabardine slacks and a turquoise sweater. “I thought you’d like something to read besides the tabloids I saw a candy striper passing out next door. Anything has to be better

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than ‘MOM RAPED BY ALIENS GIVES BIRTH TO TWOHEADED BABY.’ “

“You know the old saying … two heads are better than one,” Dolly quipped.

Annie groaned, a smile crinkling her eyes. “You sound as if you’re feeling better.”

“Heaps,” Dolly told her. Annie had visited her every day, sometimes twice a day, always bringing her some little thing to brighten her up-a bouquet of yellow chrysanthemums, a basket of raspberries from Balducci’s, a tube of her favorite Jungle Fever lipstick. If there was a silver lining to this whole ordeal, it was being able to spend these precious hours with her niece.

But, still, something inside Dolly twisted and turned like a restless sleeper seeking a comfortable spot on the mattress. She knew what it was, and she dreaded it. But now with Henri at her side, she could dare to risk it-say the words, and maybe put an,end to this eternal gnawing inside her, this guilt. Yes, the time felt right somehow to finally come clean with Annie … tell her the truth, let her know what had come between her and Eve. Being given a fresh start with Henri-it was like a miracle. She imagined herself, her life, like an old house that had to be cleared of cobwebs and filth to make way for its new occupants. She wanted, needed to begin her new life scrubbed clean.

Even so, she fretted, What if, once she knows the truth, she never wants anything more to do with me?

Her heart lurching, Dolly sidled onto a safer topic. “How did your talk with Felder go?” she asked.

Annie, who had met with the department-store tycoon this morning, brightened, seeming almost to glow. “He says he’s still interested in making a deal with me … that if my aunt thinks highly enough of me to go dashing out in front of a taxi in order to convince him how good I’d be for him, I must be something pretty special.” She grinned. “But you know what I think?”

“What’s that?”

“That you’re the special one.” Her eyes turned suddenly bright. “I don’t know if I should be thanking you