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She laughed again and the slight flush came back into her cheeks.
"But you're nice, anyway… Perhaps if you had seen my face you might have let me go unkissed all the quicker… Masks cover horrible surprises… And, then again, if you had seen it, perhaps you might never have let me go at all!" she added, audaciously.
In the gilded balcony opposite, the orchestra had now ceased playing; the whirl and noise of the dancers filled the immense momentary quiet. Then soft chimes from the great clock sounded midnight amid cries of, "Unmask! masks off, everybody!"
The Harlequin turned and drawing the black vizard from his face, bent low and saluted her hand; and she, responding gaily with a curtsey, looked up into the features of an utter stranger.
She stood silent a moment, the surprised smile stamped on her lips; then, in her turn, she slipped the mask from her eyes.
"Voila!" she cried. "C'est moi!"
After a moment he said, half to himself;
"I knew well enough that you must be unusual. But I hadn't any idea – any – idea – "
"Then – you are not disappointed in me, monsieur?"
"My only regret is that I had my hour, and wasted it. Those hours never sound twice for wandering harlequins."
"Poor Harlequin!" she said saucily – "I'm sorry, but even your magic can't recall a vanished hour! Poor, poor Harlequin! You were too generous to me!"
"And now you are going to forget me," he said. "That is to be my reward."
"Why – I don't think – I don't expect to forget you. I suppose I am likely to know you some day… Who are you, please? Somebody very grand in New York?"
"My name is Quarren."
There was a silence; she glanced down at the ball-room floor through the lattice screen, then slowly turned around to look at him again.
"Have you ever heard of me?" he asked, smiling.
"Yes."
"Are you disappointed?"
"Y-es. Pleasantly… I supposed you to be – different."
He laughed:
"Has the world been knocking me very dreadfully to you, Mrs. Leeds?"
"No… One's impressions form without any reason – and vaguely – from – nothing in particular. – I thought you were a very different sort of man. – I am glad you are not."
"That is charming of you."
"It's honest. I had no desire to meet the type of man I supposed you to be. Am I too frank?"
"No, indeed," he said, laughing, "but I'm horribly afraid that I really am the kind of man you imagined me."
"You are not."
"How do you know?"
"No," she said, shaking her pretty head, "you can't be."
He said, quoting her own words amiably: "I'm merely one of the necessary incidents of any social environment – like flowers and champagne – "
"Mr. Quarren!"
In her distress she laid an impulsive hand on his sleeve; he lifted it, laid it across the back of his own hand, and bowing, saluted it lightly, gaily.
"I am not offended," he said; " – I am what you supposed me."
"Please don't say it! You are not. I didn't know you; I was – prejudiced – "
"You'll find me out sooner or later," he said laughing, "so I might as well admit that your cap fitted me."
"It doesn't fit!" she retorted; "I was a perfect fool to say that!"
"As long as you like me," he returned, "does it make any difference what I am?"
"Of course it does! I'm not likely to find a man agreeable unless he's worth noticing."
"Am I?"
"Oh, gentle angler, I refuse to nibble. Be content that an hour out of my life has sped very swiftly in your company!"
She turned and laid her hand on the little gilt door. He opened it for her.
"You've been very nice to me," she said. "I won't forget you."
"You'll certainly forget me for that very reason. If I hadn't been nice I'd have been the exception. And you would have remembered."
She said with an odd smile:
"Do you suppose that pleasant things have been so common in my life that only the unpleasant episode makes any impression on my memory?"
"To really remember me as I want you to, you ought to have had something unpardonable to forgive me."
"Perhaps I have!" she said, daringly; and slipped past him and down the narrow stairs, her loup-mask fluttering from her elbow.
At the foot of the stairs she turned, looking back at him over her bare shoulder:
"I've mortally offended at least three important men by hiding up there with you. That is conceding something to your attractions, isn't it?"
"Everything. Will you let me find you some supper – and let the mortally offended suitors sit and whistle a bit longer?"
"Poor suitors – they've probably been performing heel-tattoos for an hour… Very well, then – I feel unusually shameless to-night – and I'll go with you. But don't be disagreeable to me if a neglected and glowering young man rushes up and drags me away by the back hair."
"Who for example?"
"Barent Van Dyne, for instance."
"Oh, we'll side-step that youthful Knickerbocker," said Quarren, gaily. "Leave it to me, Mrs. Leeds."
"To behave so outrageously to Mr. Van Dyne is peculiarly horrid and wicked of me," she said. "But you don't realise that – and – the fact remains that you did not take your forfeit. And I've a lot to make up for that, haven't I?" she added so naïvely that they both gave way to laughter unrestrained.
The light touch of her arm on his, now guiding him amid the noisy, rollicking throngs, now yielding to his guidance, ceased as he threaded a way through the crush to a corner, and seated her at a table for two.
In a few moments he came back with all kinds of delectable things; went for more, returned laden, shamelessly pulled several palms between them and the noisy outer world, and seated himself beside her.
With napkin and plate on the low table beside her, she permitted him to serve her. As he filled her champagne glass she lifted it and looked across it at him:
"How did you discover my identity?" she asked. "I'm devoured by curiosity."
"Shall I tell you?"
"Please."
"I'll take a tumble in your estimation if I tell you."
"I don't think you will. Try it anyway."
"Very well then. Somebody told me."
"And you let me bet with you! And you bet on a certainty!"
"I did."
"Oh!" she exclaimed reproachfully, "is that good sportsmanship, Mr. Quarren?"
"No; very bad. And that was why I didn't take the forfeit. Now you understand."
She sat considering him, the champagne breaking in her glass.
"Yes, I do understand now. A good sportsman couldn't take a forfeit which he won betting on a certainty… That wasn't a real wager, was it?"
"No, it wasn't."
"If it had been, I – I don't suppose you'd have let me go."
"Indeed not!"
They laughed, watching each other, curiously.
"Which ought to teach me never again to make any such highly original and sporting wagers," she said. "Anyway, you were perfectly nice about it. Of course you couldn't very well have been otherwise. Tell me, did you really suppose me to be attractive? You couldn't judge. How could you – under that mask?"
"Do you think that your mouth could have possibly belonged to any other kind of a face except your own?" he said coolly.
"Is my mouth unusual?"
"Very."
"How is it unusual?"
"I haven't analysed the matter, but it is somehow so indescribable that I guessed very easily what the other features must be."
"Oh, flattery! Oh, impudence! Do you remember when Falstaff said that the lion could always recognise the true prince? Shame on you, Mr. Quarren. You are not only a very adroit flatterer but a perfectly good sportsman after all – and the most gifted tormentor I ever knew in all my life. And I like you fine!" She laughed, and made a quick little gesture, partly arrested as he met her more than half way, touching the rim of his glass to hers. "To our friendship," he said.
"Our friendship," she repeated, gaily, "if the gods speed it."
" – And – its consequences," he added. "Don't forget those."
"What are they likely to be?"
"Who knows? That's the gamble! But let us recognise all kinds of possibilities, and drink to them, too. Shall we?"
"What do you mean by the consequences of friendship?" she repeated, hesitating.
"That is the interesting thing about a new friendship," he explained. "Nobody can ever predict what the consequences are to be. Are you afraid to drink to the sporting chances, hazards, accidents, and possibilities of our new friendship, Mrs. Leeds? That is a perfectly good sporting proposition."
She considered him, interested, her eyes full of smiling curiosity, perfectly conscious of the swift challenge of his lifted glass.
After a few seconds' hesitation she struck the ringing rim of her glass against his:
"To our new friendship, Monsieur Harlequin!" she said lightly – "with every sporting chance, worldly hazard, and heavenly possibility in it!"
For the first time the smile faded from his face, and something in his altered features arrested her glass at her very lips.
"How suddenly serious you seem," she said. "Have I said anything?"
He drained his glass; after a second she tasted hers, looked at him, finished it, still watching him.
"Really," she said; "you made me feel for a moment as though you and I were performing a solemn rite. That was a new phase of you to me – that exceedingly sudden and youthful gravity."
He remained silent. Into his mind, just for a second, and while in the act of setting the glass to his lips, there had flashed a flicker of pale clairvoyance. It seemed to illumine something within him which he had never believed in – another self.
For that single instant he caught a glimpse of it, then it faded like a spark in a confused dream.
He raised his head and looked gravely across at Strelsa Leeds; and level-eyed, smiling, inquisitive, she returned his gaze.
Could this brief contact with her have evoked in him a far-buried something which had never before given sign of existence? And could it have been anything resembling aspiration that had glimmered so palely out of an ordered and sordid commonplace personality which, with all its talent for frivolity, he had accepted as his own?
Without reason a slight flush came into his cheeks.
"Why do you regard me so owlishly?" she asked, amused. "I repeat that you made me feel as though we were performing a sort of solemn rite when we drank our toast."
"You couldn't feel that way with such a thoroughly frivolous man as I am. Could you?"
