how much experience I have
had."

She raised her eyebrows slightly and turned to walk on. He followed at
her shoulder, and when they came to the little stone stair that leads
down to the Promenade, he halted and glanced expressively off among the
paths and shade.

"There isn't time," she said, shaking _her_ head now.

He went down two steps alone, and then held out his hand with that
irresistible smile; she hesitated, looked helplessly around, and then,
like all women who hesitate, was forthwith lost, swallowed up, in the
maze of those wandering paths. Von Ibn secured his cane well beneath his
arm and lit a cigarette.

"Do I ever now ask you 'may I'?" he said.

"You never did ask me 'might you?'" she replied.

He drew two or three satisfied puffs.

"It is good to be so friends," he commented placidly, and then he took
his cane into his right hand again and swung it with the peculiarly
vigorous swing which in his case always betrayed the possession of an
uncommon degree of _bonne humeur_. "And now for your experience?" he
asked after a little. "It is that which I will to hear."

"Did you ever go to a masked ball?"

"_Mais, naturellement._"

"Well, so did I." She paused to note the effect.

He threw a quick glance of undefined question at her.

"Masked?" he demanded.

"Oh, dear no! thickly veiled, and 'way upstairs in a gallery."

"Were you greatly amused 'way upstairs in your gallery?"

"Yes, really; there were ever so many men there that I knew."

"Did they come upstairs in the gallery?"

"No indeed, no one knew that I was there. But it interested me to see
whom _I_ knew--"

"Was I there?" he interrupted.

"Oh, it wasn't here! it was ever so long ago, while my husband was
alive."

"Did you see your husband?"

"Yes," she said flushing, "and he was just like all the other men. He
wore no mask, and he did not care one bit who might recognize him."

"You had been better not gone," said the man decidedly.

"Yes, I think so; I lost all my love for my husband that night, and
killed all my faith in mankind forever."

"Why did you be possessed to go?"

"I went because I did not want to be deceived in the way that many women
are deceived."

Von Ibn laughed.

"You know now all of everything, you think?"

"I know more than most other women do."

"You would have known much more yet if you had worn a mask," he told her
very dryly.

She did not reply, and after a few minutes he continued:

"A