tagious.

"You may not," she replied frankly, recovering herself, and assuming a
tone of lightness to conquer the fluttering in her throat. "The list
of names I have had to remember this evening is most formidable,
another one would make the last feather here," and she tapped her
forehead significantly. "I was just about to flee from it all when--"

She hesitated and looked about her in an uncertain way. He at once
placed a chair for her. She allowed her hand to rest on the back of it
as if undecided.

"You will not be so unkind?" he said; and his words held a plea. She
answered it by seating herself.

"Well?"

At the interrogation he smiled.

"Will you not allow me, Madame, to introduce myself?"

"But, Monsieur Incognito, consider; I have remembered you best because
you have not done so; it was a novelty. But all those people whose
names were spoken to me this evening--pouf!" and she blew a feathery
spray of fern from her palms, "they have all drifted into oblivion
like that. Do you wish, then, to be presented and--to follow them?"

"I refuse to follow them there--from you."

His tones were so low, so even, so ardent, that she looked startled
and drew her breath quickly.

"You are bold, Monsieur," and though she strove to speak haughtily she
was too much of a girl to be severe when her eyes met his.

"Why not?" he asked, growing bolder as she grew more timid. "You grant
me one moment out of your life; then you mean to close the gates
against me--if you can. In that brief time I must condense all that
another man should take months to say to you. I have been speaking to
you daily, however, for six weeks and--"

"Monsieur! Six weeks?"

"Every day," he assented, smiling down at her. "Of course you did not
hear me. I was very confidential about it. I even tried to stop it
entirely when I was allowed to believe that Mademoiselle was Madame."

"But it is quite true--she is Madame."

"Certainly; yet you let me think--well, I forgive you for it now,
since I have found you again."

"Monsieur!"--she half arose.

"Will Mademoiselle have her fortune told?" asked a voice beside them,
and the beringed Egyptian pushed aside the palms, "or Monsieur,
perhaps?"

"Both of us," he assented with eagerness; "that is, if Mademoiselle
chooses." He dropped two pieces of gold in the beaded purse held out.
"Come," he half whispered to the Marquise, "let me see if oblivion is
really the doom fate reads against me."

She