d love it," she assented; hate was fast merging back into
liking.

Strangman cackled his customary nervous laugh. "Then that is settled,"
he said, "and here is the ticket. You will have to have a fancy dress,
hire it, I suppose, since the time is so short. That, and a taxi there
and back, will come out of the paper. Hope it is a good show, for your
sake."

Afterwards, when she looked back at that evening, at the Artists' Ball,
Joan was ashamed to remember the eager heat of excitement which took
possession of her from the moment when she stepped out of the _Evening
Herald_ taxi and ran along the passage to the ladies' cloak-room. She
had, it seemed to her, no excuse; she was not young enough to have made
it pardonable and she had long ago decided that the intoxication of life
could be no longer hers. Its loss was to be part of the bitter lesson
fate had taught her. Yet as she saw herself in the glass, a ridiculous
figure in black flounces with just one scarlet rose pinned at her waist
and another nodding on the brim of her hat, she could not keep the
excitement from sparkling in her eyes and the colour of youth was
certainly flaming in her cheeks. Fanny had fitted her out with clever
fingers as a black Pierrette. A Pierrette, taken from the leaves of some
old French book, with her hair done in little dropping curls just
faintly powdered, as if a mist of snow lay over the brown.

She was young, after all, and the music called to her with insistent
voice. "I am looking nice," Joan confided to her reflection, "and I will
have a good time just for to-night."

Then she turned and went quickly, walking with light feet and eager eyes
that sought for adventure into the crowded room.

It gave her first of all an immense sense of space. The whole opera
house had been converted into a ballroom. There were hundreds of people
present, and every imaginable fancy dress under the sun. Brilliant
colours, bright lights and the constant movement of the crowd made up a
scene of kaleidoscopic splendour.

There was a waltz in progress and Joan stood for a little with her back
to a pillar of one of the boxes, bewildered by the noise and moving
colours. Standing opposite her, in the shadow of the other looped-up
curtain, was a man. A Pierrot to her Pierrette, only his costume was
carried out in white, and on his head, instead of the orthodox hat, he
wore a tight-bound black handkerchief. His eyes, for some reason, made
her restless. It w