eserve, to be dealt with later, at his
leisure. For the present, his business pressed with the waning night.

In high feather, bubbling with mischief, he sidled along the wall a
little way, then halted to familiarise himself with scene and
atmosphere against his next move.

But after the first minute or two, spent in silent review of the
brilliant scene, his thin lips lost something of their cynic
modelling, the eyes behind the scarlet visor something of their
mischievous twinkle--softening with shadows envious and regretful.

The room was as one vast pool of limpid golden light, walls and
ceilings so luminous with the refulgence of a thousand electric bulbs
that they seemed translucent, glowing with a radiance from beyond.

On the famous floor, twelve-score couples swung and swayed to the
intoxicating rhythms of an unseen orchestra; kaleidoscopic in their
amazingly variegated costuming of colour, drifting past the lonely,
diabolical little figure, an endless chain of paired anachronisms.

Searching narrowly each fair face that flashed past in another's arms,
he waited with seeming patience. But the music buzzed in his brain and
his toes tingled for it; breathing the warm, voluptuous air, he
inhaled hints of a thousand agreeable and exciting scenes; watching,
he perceived in perturbation the witchery of a hundred exquisite
women. And a rancorous discontent gnawed at his famished heart.

This was all his by right of birth--should be his now, but for the
blind malice of his sorry destiny. _Kismet_ had favoured him greatly,
but too late....

But of a sudden he forgot self-pity and vain repining, in the
discovery of the one particular woman swinging dizzily past in the
arms of an Incroyable, whose giddy plumage served only to render the
more striking her exquisite fairness and the fine simplicity of her
costume.

For she was all in the black-and-white uniform of a Blessington
shopgirl; black skirt and blouse, stockings and pumps, relieved by
showy linen at throat and wrists, with at waist the white patch of a
tiny lace-and-linen apron.

Perhaps it was his start of recognition; it may have been the very
fixed intensity of his regard; whatever drew it, her gaze veered to
his silent and aloof figure, and for an instant his eyes held hers. At
once, to his consternation, the hot blood stained her lovely face from
throat to brow; her glance wavered, fell in confusion, then as though
by a strong effort of will alone, st