The orchestra was playing a Viennese waltz and couple after couple slipped out upon the floor.

Lounging against the wall, Ryder glowered mockingly through his mask holes at the motley.  It was so exactly as he had foreseen.  He was bored—­and he was going to be more bored.  He was jostled—­and he was going to be more jostled.  He was hot—­and he was going to be hotter.

Where in the world was Jinny Jeffries?  He deserved, he felt, exhilaratingly kind treatment to compensate him for this insanity.  He gazed about, and encountering a plump shepherdess ogling him he stepped hastily behind a palm.

He fairly stepped upon a very small person in black.  A phantom-like small person, with the black silk hubarah of the Mohammedan high-caste woman drawn down to her very brows, and over the entire face the black street veil.  Not a feature visible.  Not an eyebrow.  Not an eyelash, not a hint of the small person herself, except a very small white, ringed hand, lifted as if in defense of his clumsiness.

“Sorry,” said Ryder quickly, and driven by the instinct of reparation.  “Won’t you dance?”

A mute shake of the head.

Well, his duty was done.  But something, the very lack of all invitation in the black phantom, made him linger.  He repeated his request in French.

From behind the veil came a liquidly soft voice with a note of mirth.  “I understand the English, monsieur,” it informed him.

“Enough, then, to say yes in it?”

The black phantom shook its head.  “My education, alas! has only proceeded to the N.”  Her speech was quaint, unhesitating, but oddly inflected.  “I regret—­but I am not acquainted with the yes.”

A gay character for a masked ball!  Indifference and pique swung Ryder towards a geisha girl, but a trace of irritation lingered and he found her, “You likee plink gleisha?” singularly witless.

He’d tell McLean just how darned captivating his outfit was, he promised himself.

And then he caught sight of a familiar pair of gray eyes smiling over the white veil of an odalisque.  Jinny Jeffries was wearing one of the many costumes there that passed for Oriental, a glittering assemblage of Turkish trousers and Circassian veils, silver shawls and necklaces and wide bracelets banding bare arms.

As an effect it was distinctly successful.

“Ten thousand dinars could not pay for the chicken she has eaten,” uttered Ryder appreciatively in the language of the old slave market, and stepped promptly ahead of a stout Pantalon.

“Jack!  You did come!” There was a note in the girl’s voice as if she had disbelieved in her good fortune.  “Oh, and beautiful as Roderick Dhu!  Didn’t I tell you that you could find something in that shop?” she declared in triumph.

“Do you imagine that this came out of a costumer’s?” Ryder swung her swiftly out in the fox trot before the crowd invaded the floor.  “If Andy McLean could hear you!  Why this, this is the real thing, the Scots-wha-hae-wi’-Wallace-bled stuff.”