no to-morrow!"

I looked down on her as I stood, and a certain madness of youth seized
hold upon me. I knew that when she rose she would be just tall enough;
that she would be round, full, perfect woman in every line of her
figure; that her hair would be some sort of dark brown in the daylight;
that her eyes would also be of some sort of darkness, I knew not what,
for I could not see them fully through the domino. I could see the hair
piled back from the nape of as lovely a neck as ever caught a kiss. I
could see at the edge of the mask that her ear was small and close to
the head; could see that her nose must be straight, and that it sprang
from the brow strongly, with no weak indentation. The sweep of a strong,
clean chin was not to be disguised, and at the edge of the mask I caught
now and then the gleam of white, even teeth, and the mocking smile of
red, strongly curved lips, hid by her fan at the very moment when I was
about to fix them in my memory, so that I might see them again and know.
I suspect she hid a smile, but her eyes looked up at me grandly and
darkly. Nineteen, perhaps twenty, I considered her age to be; gentle,
and yet strong, with character and yet with tenderness, I made estimate
that she must be; and that she had more brains than to be merely a lay
figure I held sure, because there was something, that indefinable
magnetism, what you like to call it, which is not to be denied, which
assured me that here indeed was a woman not lightly to accept, nor
lightly to be forgotten. Ah, now I was seized and swept on in a swift
madness. Still the music sang on.

"My hostess said it would be a lottery to-night in this Row of Mystery,"
I went on, "but I do not find it so."

"All life is lottery," she said in answer.

"And lotteries are lawful when one wins the capital prize. One stretches
out his hand in the dark. But some one must win. I win now. The game of
masks is a fine one. I am vastly pleased with it. Some day I shall see
you without any mask. Come. We must dance. I could talk better if we
were more alone."

As I live, she rose and put her hand upon my arm with no further
argument; why, I cannot say, perhaps because I had allowed no other man
to stand thus near her.

We stepped out upon the crowded floor. I was swept away by it all, by
the waltz, by the stars above, by the moon, by the breath of women and
the scent of their hair, and the perfume of roses, by the passion of
living, by youth, youth