mic was really quite wonderful; policemen bowed to it, irate
strangers allowed their anger to ooze away before it. It smoothed the
owner's way through difficulties and brought him favors when least
expected; rage changed to servility; indignation, opposition, even
jealousy altered color in the shadow of the Van Dam millions. Nothing
really unpleasant ever happened to Roly, and so it was that he had
become _blase_ and tired at twenty-six.

He followed his masked guide across Canal Street and into the foreign
quarter of the city, where the surroundings were unfamiliar to him. He
gazed with mild repugnance at the squalid old houses, moldering behind
their rusted iron balconies. Dim, flag-paved hallways allowed him a
glimpse of flowered courtyards at the rear; cool passages went twisting
in between the buildings. Over hard-baked, glaring walls there drooped
branches laden with bloom and fruit. The streets were narrow, the houses
leaned intimately toward one another, as if exchanging gossip; little
cafes with sanded floors opened upon the sidewalks. Here the carnival
crowd was more foreign in character; people were dancing to orchestras
of guitar and mandolin; youths turned somersaults for pennies; ragged
negroes jigged and shuffled with outstretched hats.

Through this confusion the Norman girl took her way, now seeking some
deep doorway to allow a particularly boisterous group to pass, now
flitting through the open spaces with the swift irregularity of a
butterfly winging its course through sunlit stretches. But her caution,
her birdlike, backward glances, told Van Dam that she was in constant
dread of discovery, and involuntarily he lessened the distance between
them.

It was well, perhaps, that he did so, for just then a man in a domino
like his own accosted the girl. Roly saw his guide shrink away, saw her
turn and signal him with a swift, imperious gesture of warning. Instead
of heeding it, he moved forward in time to intercept the stranger. The
fellow was laughing loudly; he assumed a tipsy air and lurched against
the girl; then, with a quickness that belied his pose, he snatched at
her mask and bared her features. She cried out in terror, and with the
sound of her voice Mr. Van Dam flew to action. He knew that until six
o'clock disguises were inviolate, and that it was against the strictest
of police regulations to unmask a reveler; therefore he yielded to a
righteous impulse and struck the man in the domino square