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those mechanical birds that pop from Germanic clocks. Apparently, Madame Gaudillon needed constant care. If left alone she would turn to self-abuse; as a child, Peronette had come upon her mother often in the throes of such, once with chimney tools, once with the long wooden spoon that the cook had reported missing. It had gotten so that the servants had to hide the tapers when the family chapel was not in use. Not to mention the scenario she’d forced the dim-witted stable boy into; the only remedy for which was the boy’s quick removal to an asylum just outside Lucerne.
    I sat stupefied. I had never heard anyone talk so freely, so frankly. (So… crazily —I think perhaps Peronette took after her mad mother in many ways.)
    â€œWe ought to be getting back, don’t you think?” I asked finally; hours of the afternoon had quickly passed. “Don’t you agree?” I prompted.
    â€œDoesn’t the sun feel sublime?” This, after a long silence, was Peronette’s response. With it, she loosened her dress at the collar and bared her throat to the sun. She lay back upon the rock. I stared at her, pleasuring in her presence and growing ever more conscious of my laboring heart and lungs; yes, her effect on me was bodily.
    I had always shied from the sun, as from so much else. But how glorious it felt to bare oneself to its rays! Of course, I did not loosen my collar, did not raise my skirts to the knee as Peronette had, but still…I lay down beside her…. And dreamed, wakefully; I may have nodded off.
    Then, I sensed… something . A change. I sat straight up. The sound…the rush…. The tide was coming in! The rocks that had led to our perch were already underwater, or nearly so, and the sea was rising up the rock on which we sat, stranded!
    I shook Peronette, frantically. “Wake up!” I cried. “Wake up, please . The tide—!”
    Peronette rose up leisurely onto her elbows, looked this way and that, and, to my astonishment, lay back down.
    â€œPeronette! We will drown!”
    â€œDon’t be silly. The tide will not rise as high as this rock,” said she, quite calmly. “Or at least, it won’t cover this rock.”
    â€œBut it has already risen over the rocks behind us!…Hurry, please!”
    She rolled her skirts higher. “But wouldn’t you rather wait and see what happens? Watch the water rise?”
    â€œ I would not! ” Once the tide returned, fully, we would be a watery distance from the shore, from safety. I knew I would die that very day, my head dashed upon the rocks as I tried to swim ashore! Trying to put my boots back on, I worried the laces into knots; finally, I could but sling the pair over my shoulder.
    â€œWe can always swim in,” said Peronette. “If we must.”
    â€œ I cannot swim! ” I began to cry. It was a child’s sobbing, graceless, complete with heaving shoulders and contorted features, and it seemed to amuse my companion.
    â€œAh, well then,” said Peronette, reaching for her shoes and smiling, “in that case we ought to go, no?” She held my hand and uttered through her laughter a thousand hollow assurances. I followed her over the rocks, some of which were indeed submerged, more slippery and sharper than they’d been before.
    When finally we’d made it ashore, scrambling up the dune, I was fairly hysterical. I stopped crying only when I determined to do so. However, no strength of will could arrest my shaking and shivering.
    When I sat in the tall grass to tackle the knots in my laces, I saw how badly I’d cut my feet. Our footing had been so unsure on those shell-encrusted rocks. Blood seeped through the sand that covered my legs to the shin. It was then the pain began. Peronette was smiling still: I assumed she had not cut herself. But I was wrong; she had. And I might have begun to think her too strange had she not then knelt to take my feet