and silently
as a picture flashed from a magic lantern slide, a man's head came into
view. A man's eyes, dusky, fierce, with something of a stare in them,
looked the motionless figure keenly up and down.

There followed another interval as though the intruder were debating
with himself upon some plan of action, then, boldly but quite quietly, he
pushed the door back and entered.

He was a slight, trim man, clean-shaven, with high cheek-bones that made
a long jaw seem the leaner by contrast. His sleek black hair was parted
in the middle above his swarthy face, giving an unmistakably foreign
touch to his appearance. His tread was light and wary as a cat's.

His eyes swept the room comprehensively as he advanced, coming back
to the woman at the window as though magnetically drawn to her. But
she remained quite unaware of him, and he, no whit disconcerted,
calmly seated himself at one of the tables behind her and took up a
pack of cards.

The dance-music in the room below was uproariously gay. Some of the
dancers were singing. Now and then a man's voice bellowed through the
clamour like the blare of a bull.

Whenever this happened, the man at the table smiled to himself a faint,
thin-lipped smile, and the woman at the window shivered again.

Suddenly, during a lull, he spoke. He was counting out the cards into
heaps with lightning rapidity, turning up one here and there, and he did
not raise his eyes from his occupation.

"I say, you know," he said in a drawl that was slightly nasal, "you will
have to tell me how old you are. Is that an obstacle?"

She wheeled round at the first deliberate syllable. The electric
light flared upon her pale, proud face. She stood in dead silence,
looking at him.

"You mustn't mind," he said persuasively, still without lifting his eyes.
"I swear I'll never tell. Come now!"

Very quietly she turned and closed the window; then with a certain
stateliness she advanced to the table at which he sat, and stopped
before it.

"I think you are making a mistake," she said, in a voice that had a hint
of girlish sweetness about it despite its formality.

He looked up then with a jerk, and the next instant was on his feet.

"Gad! I'm tremendously sorry! What must you take me for? I took you for
Mrs. Damer. I beg you will forgive me."

She smiled a little, and some of the severity went out of her face. For a
moment that too seemed girlish.

"It is of no consequence. I saw it was a mistake