Three little Pierrettes scampered through the crowd, pelting right and left with confetti and balloons, and two stalwart monks and a thin Hamlet pursued them, keeping up the bombardment amid a great combustion of balloons.  A spangled Harlequin snatched his hands full of confetti and darted behind a palm.

It was the palm of the black phantom, the palm of Ryder’s rebuff.  Perhaps the Harlequin had met repulse here, too, and cherished resentment, not a very malicious resentment but a mocking feint of it, for when Ryder turned sharply after him—­oddly, he himself was strolling toward that nook—­he found Harlequin circling with mock entreaties about the stubbornly refusing black domino.

“Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance?” chanted Harlequin, with a shower of confetti flung at the girl’s averted face.

There was such a shrinking of genuine fright in her withdrawal that Ryder had a fine thrill of rescue.

“My dance,” he declared, laying an intervening hand on her muffled arm.

His tartan-draped shoulder crowded the Harlequin from sight.

She raised her head.  The black street veil was flung back, but a black yashmak was hiding all but her eyes.  Great dark eyes they were, deep as night and soft as shadows, arched with exquisitely curved brows like the sweep of wild birds’ wings....  The most lovely eyes that dreams could bring.

A flash of relief shone through their childish fright.  With sudden confidence she turned to Ryder.

“Thank you....  My education, monsieur, has proceeded to the Ts,” she told him with a nervous little laugh over her chagrin, drowned in a burst of louder laughter from the discomfited Harlequin, who turned on his heel and then bounded after fresh prey.

“Shall we dance or promenade?” asked Ryder.

Hesitatingly her gaze met his.  Red and gold and green and blue flecks of confetti were glimmering like fishscales over her black wrap and were even entangled drolly in the absurd lengths of her eye-lashes.

“It is—­if I have not forgotten how to dance,” she murmured.  “If it is a waltz, perhaps—­”

It was a waltz.  Ryder had an odd impression of her irresolution before, with strange eagerness, he swept her into the music.  Within the clumsy bulk of her draperies his arm felt the slightness of her young form.  She was no more than a child....  No child, either, at a masquerade, but a fairy, dancing in the moonlight....  She was a leaf blowing in the breeze....  She was the very breeze and the moonlight.

And then, to his astonishment, the dance was over.  Those moments had seemed no more than one.

“We must have the next,” he said quickly.  “What made you think you had forgotten?”

“It is nearly four years, monsieur, since I danced with a man.”

“With a man?  You have been dancing with girls, then?”

She nodded.