The Blinding Belladonna

"I'm in love with Rosemary," he told her suddenly.  "It's a kind of self-indulgence saying that to you."

It seemed very strange and official to gim, as if the very tables and chairs in the Cafe des Allies would remember it forever.  Already he felt her absence from these skies: on the beach he could only remember the sun-torn flesh of her shoulder; at Tarmes he crushed out her footprints as he crossed the garden; and now the orchestra launching into the "Nice Carnival Song," an echo of last year's vanished gaieties, started the little dance that went on all about her.  In a hundred hours she had come to possess all the world's dark magic; the blinding belladonna, the caffein converting physical into nervous energy, the mandragora that imposes harmony.

Part II, Chapter XI, Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published 1934.

I don't really have anything intelligent to say today.  Funny.  Except that a coconut macaroon cake will be involved today because it's my dad's birthday.  I can hear the electric beaters whipped up the meringue this very moment!  Suspense!