n snatched his hands
full of confetti and darted behind a palm.

It was the palm of the black phantom, the palm of Ryder's rebuff.
Perhaps the Harlequin had met repulse here, too, and cherished
resentment, not a very malicious resentment but a mocking feint of
it, for when Ryder turned sharply after him--oddly, he himself was
strolling toward that nook--he found Harlequin circling with mock
entreaties about the stubbornly refusing black domino.

"Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the
dance?" chanted Harlequin, with a shower of confetti flung at the
girl's averted face.

There was such a shrinking of genuine fright in her withdrawal that
Ryder had a fine thrill of rescue.

"My dance," he declared, laying an intervening hand on her muffled
arm.

His tartan-draped shoulder crowded the Harlequin from sight.

She raised her head. The black street veil was flung back, but a
black yashmak was hiding all but her eyes. Great dark eyes they
were, deep as night and soft as shadows, arched with exquisitely
curved brows like the sweep of wild birds' wings.... The most lovely
eyes that dreams could bring.

A flash of relief shone through their childish fright. With sudden
confidence she turned to Ryder.

"Thank you.... My education, monsieur, has proceeded to the Ts," she
told him with a nervous little laugh over her chagrin, drowned in a
burst of louder laughter from the discomfited Harlequin, who turned
on his heel and then bounded after fresh prey.

"Shall we dance or promenade?" asked Ryder.

Hesitatingly her gaze met his. Red and gold and green and blue
flecks of confetti were glimmering like fishscales over her black
wrap and were even entangled drolly in the absurd lengths of her
eye-lashes.

"It is--if I have not forgotten how to dance," she murmured. "If it
is a waltz, perhaps--"

It was a waltz. Ryder had an odd impression of her irresolution
before, with strange eagerness, he swept her into the music. Within
the clumsy bulk of her draperies his arm felt the slightness of her
young form. She was no more than a child.... No child, either, at a
masquerade, but a fairy, dancing in the moonlight.... She was a leaf
blowing in the breeze.... She was the very breeze and the moonlight.

And then, to his astonishment, the dance was over. Those moments had
seemed no more than one.

"We must have the next," he said quickly. "What made you think you
had forgotten?"

"It is nearly four years,