one's affinity. One doesn't need a lifetime.
You began the business at the Wohenhoffens' ball. To-day you've merely
put on the finishing touches."

"Oh, then I _am_ the woman you met at the masked ball?" she cried.

"Look me in the eye, and tell me you're not," he defied her.

"I haven't the faintest interest in telling you I'm not. On the
contrary, it rather pleases me to let you imagine that I am."

"She owed me a grudge, you know. I hoodwinked her like everything," he
confided.

"Oh, did you? Then, as a sister woman, I should be glad to serve as her
instrument of vengeance. Do you happen to have such a thing as a watch
about you?" she inquired.

"Yes," he said.

"Will you be good enough to tell me what o'clock it is?"

"What are your motives for asking?"

"I'm expected at home at five."

"Where do you live?"

"What are the motives for asking?"

"I want to call upon you."

"You might wait till you're invited."

"Well, invite me--quick!"

"Never."

"Never?"

"Never, never, never," she asseverated. "A man who's forgotten me as you
have!"

"But if I've only met you once at a masked ball--"

"Can't you be brought to realise that every time you mistake me for that
woman of the masked ball you turn the dagger in the wound?" she
demanded.

"But if you won't invite me to call upon you, how and when am I to see
you again?"

"I haven't an idea," she answered, cheerfully. "I must go now. Good-by."
She rose.

"One moment," he interposed. "Before you go will you allow me to look at
the palm of your left hand?"

"What for?"

"I can tell fortunes. I'm extremely good at it," he boasted. "I'll tell
you yours."

"Oh, very well," she assented, sitting down again: and guilelessly she
pulled off her glove.

He took her hand, a beautifully slender, nervous hand, warm and soft,
with rosy, tapering fingers.

"Oho! you _are_ an old maid after all," he cried. "There's no wedding
ring."

"You villain!" she gasped, snatching the hand away.

"I promised to tell your fortune. Haven't I told it correctly?"

"You needn't rub it in, though. Eccentric old maids don't like to be
reminded of their condition."

"Will you marry _me_?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Partly for curiosity. Partly because it's the only way I can think of,
to make sure of seeing you again. And then, I like your hair. Will you?"

"I can't," she said.

"Why not?"

"The stars forbid. And I'm ambitious. In my horoscope it is written that