Avenue in your fine barouche; and here at last I meet you!" I clasped
my hands passionately.

"My beautiful barouche! My box at the opera!" the girl mimicked.
"What a cheerful Ananias you are!"

"Thou art the most enchanting creature in all the universe. Thou art
even as a turquoise, a patch of radiant summer sky, eyes of sapphire,
lips--"

"Archaic, very archaic," she interrupted.

"Disillusioned in ten seconds!" I cried dismally. "How could you?"

She laughed.

"Have you no romance? Can you not see the fitness of things? If you
have not a box at the opera, you ought at least to make believe you
have. History walks about us, and you call the old style archaic!
That hurts!"

"Methinks, Sir Monk--"

"There! That's more like it. By my halidom, that's the style!"

"Odds bodkins, you don't tell me!" There was a second ripple of
laughter from behind the mask. It was rare music.

"I _could_ fall in love with you!"

"There once was a Frenchman who said that as nothing is impossible, let
us believe in the absurd. I might be old enough to be your
grandmother,"--lightly.

"Perish the thought!"

"Perish it, indeed!"

"The mask is the thing!" I cried enthusiastically. "You can make love
to another man's wife--"

"Or to your own, and nobody is the wiser,"--cynically.

"We are getting on."

"Yes, we are getting on, both in years and in folly. What are you
doing in a monk's robe? Where is your motley, gay fool?"

"I have laid it aside for the night. On such occasions as this, fools
dress as wise men, and wise men as fools; everybody goes about in
disguise."

"How would you go about to pick out the fools?"--curiously.

"Beginning with myself--"

"Thy name is also Candor!"

"Look at yonder Cavalier. He wabbles like a ship in distress, in the
wild effort to keep his feet untangled from his rapier. I'll wager
he's a wealthy plumber on week-days. Observe Anne of Austria! What
arms! I'll lay odds that her great-grandmother took in washing.
There's Romeo, now, with a pair of legs like an old apple tree. The
freedom of criticism is mine to-night! Did you ever see such
ridiculous ideas of costume? For my part, the robe and the domino for
me. All lines are destroyed; nothing is recognizable. My, my!
There's Harlequin, too, walking on parentheses."

The Blue Domino laughed again.

"You talk as if you had no friends here,"--shrewdly.

"But which is my friend and which is the man to wh