after I speak to you on the hall I
become a good Mohammedan very rapid--so rapid I see you and your most
beautiful sister come in by the great door. Many others see _also_.
We say she make a more fine Princess than the one----"

"Oh, hush!" cautioned Patricia, grasping his arm in her agitation.
"She'll hear you! She's just back of us this minute."

Doris Leighton, with a rather flushed face, leaned forward as Patricia
spoke and touched her on the shoulder.

"I must congratulate you, Peri Banou," she said with sharp gayety.
"Everyone is saying that the Princess--your sister--is the _clou_ of
the ball.",

Patricia had an uneasy sense of insincerity in the light tone, but a
swift glance into the wide eyes of the smiling Doris reassured her.

"She _is_ lovely, isn't she?" she replied ardently. "But her dress
isn't half so gorgeous as yours," she added heartily.

Doris Leighton's lashes drooped till her eyes were a narrow line of
inscrutable blue.

"Thank you so much," she said in a tone of such even sweetness that
Patricia felt uncomfortable, though she did not know why.

Doris sank back to her place and Patricia turned her attention to the
laughable parodies and excellent dances and necromancy that filled the
first half of the program. It was all hugely diverting, and she
laughed and applauded with the rest, but all the while at the back of
her mind there was a little uneasiness, a sense of insecurity and
disillusionment that flavored all the gayety with its fleeting
bitterness. She was uneasy till she had found Elinor and in the
telling of the insignificant incident had regained enough confidence to
laugh at her foolish disquiet.

"I'm always making mountains out of mole-hills, and having you level
them for me, Norn," she said, taking a glass of sherbet from the
flower-wreathed tray of the charming slave. "I wish I wasn't such an
alarmist. I felt as frantic as though Doris Leighton had drawn a
dagger, and now I can see what a goose I am."

"That's because you expect people to be perfect and then, when they
show the tiniest human weakness, you declare them demons at once," said
Elinor, gayly. "You couldn't expect her to _like_ overhearing them
praise me, could you? I think she tried to be very kind, and I admire
her tremendously for it."

Patricia puckered her brows judicially.

"I do, too, _now_," she declared. "But I've been paid up for my
evilmindedness by losing half my good time. I think I'l