"

"No more than you are Molly Lessing."

"Molly Lessing! What do you know--? Who can you be? Why are you
masked?"

"Simply," he explained pleasantly, "that my incognito may remain such
to all save you."

"But--but who _are_ you?"

"It is permitted?" he asked, with a gesture offering to take the tiny
printed card of dance engagements that dangled from her fingers by its
silken thong.

In dumb mystification the girl surrendered it.

Seating himself beside her, P. Sybarite ran his eye down the list.

"The last was number--which?" he enquired with unruffled impudence.

Half angry, half amused, wholly confused, she told him: "Fifteen."

"Then one number only remains."

His lips hardened as he read the initials pencilled opposite that
numeral; they were "B.S."

"Bayard Shaynon?" he queried.

She assented with a nod, her brows gathering.

Coolly, with the miniature pencil attached to the card, he changed the
small, faint _B_ to a large black _P_, strengthened the _S_ to
correspond, and added to that _ybarite_; then with a bow returned the
card.

The girl received the evidence of her senses with a silent gasp.

He bowed again: "Yours to command."

"You--Mr. Sybarite!"

"I, Miss Blessington."

"But--incredible!" she cried. "I can't believe you ..."

Facing her, he lifted his scarlet visor, meeting her stare with his
wistful and diffident smile.

[Illustration: Facing her, he lifted his scarlet visor.]

"You see," he said, readjusting the mask.

"But--what does this mean?"

"Do you remember our talk on the way home after _Kismet_--four hours
or several years ago: which is it?"

"I remember we talked ..."

"And I--clumsily enough, Heaven knows!--told you that I'd go far for
one who'd been kind and tolerant to me, if she were in trouble and
could use my poor services?"

"I remember--yes."

"You suspected--surely--it was yourself I had in mind?"

"Why, yes; but--"

"And you'll certainly allow that what happened later, at the door,
when I stood in the way of the importunate Mr. 'B.S.'--if I'm not
sadly in error--was enough to convince any one that you needed a
friend's good offices?"

"So," she said softly, with glimmering eyes--"so for that you followed
me here, Mr. Sybarite!"

"I wish I might claim it. But it wouldn't be true. No--I didn't follow
you."

"Please," she begged, "don't mystify me--"

"I don't mean to. But to tell the truth, my own head is still awhirl
with all the chapt