“As for my mask,” he said—­“if it still annoys you—­”

He jerked it off and away.

Escaping the balustrade, it caught a wandering air and drifted indolently down through the darkness of the street, like an errant petal plucked from some strange and sinister bloom of scarlet violence.

“And if my face tells you nothing,” he added hotly, “perhaps my name will help.  It’s Sybarite.  You may have heard it!”

As if from a blow, Shaynon’s eyes winced.  Breathing heavily, he averted a face that took on the hue of parchment in the cold light striking up from the electric globes that march Fifth Avenue.  Then quietly adjusting his crumpled cuff, he drew himself up.

“Marian,” he said as soon as he had his voice under control, “since you wish it, I’ll wait for you in the lobby, downstairs.  As—­as for you, sir—­”

“Yes, I know,” the little man interrupted wearily:  “you’ll ‘deal with’ me later, ’at a time and a place more fitting.’...Well, I won’t mind the delay if you’ll just trot along now, like a good dog—­”

Unable longer to endure the lash of his mordacious wit, Shaynon turned and left them alone on the balcony.

“I’m sorry,” P. Sybarite told the girl in unfeigned contrition.  “Please forgive me.  I’ve a vicious temper—­the colour of my hair—­and I couldn’t resist the temptation to make him squirm.”

“If you only knew how I despised him,” she said, “you wouldn’t think it necessary to excuse yourself—­though I don’t know yet what it’s all about.”

“Simply, I happen to have the whip-hand of the Shaynon conscience,” returned P. Sybarite; “I happened to know that Bayard is secretly the husband of a woman notorious in New York under the name of Mrs. Jefferson Inche.”

“Is that true?  Dare I believe—?”

Intimations of fears inexpressibly alleviated breathed in her cry.

“I believe it.”

“On what grounds?  Tell me!”

“The word of the lady herself, together with the evidence of his confusion just now.  What more do you need?”

Turning aside, the girl rested a hand upon the balustrade and gazed blankly off through the night.

“But—­I can’t help thinking there must be some mistake—­some terrible mistake.”

“If so, it is theirs—­the Shaynons’, father and son.”

“But they’ve been bringing such pressure to bear to make me agree to an earlier wedding day—!”

“Not even that shakes my belief in Mrs. Inche’s story.  As a matter of fact, Bayard offered her half a million if she’d divorce him quietly, without any publicity, in the West.”

“And she accepted—?”

“She has refused, believing she stands to gain more by holding on.”

“If that is true, how can it be that he has been begging me this very night to marry him within a month?”

“He may have entertained hopes of gaining his end—­his freedom—­in another way.”