The Celebrity threw himself into the chair beside her and asked permission to light a cigarette.

“I am going to ask you the favor of respecting my incognito, Miss Thorn, as Crocker has done,” he said.  “Crocker knew me in the East, too.  I had not counted upon finding him at Asquith.”

Miss Thorn straightened herself and made a gesture of impatience.

“An incognito!” she cried.  “But you have taken another man’s name.  And you already had his face and figure!”

I jumped.

“That is so,” he calmly returned; “the name was ready to hand, and so I took it.  I don’t imagine it will make any difference to him.  It’s only a whim of mine, and with me there’s no accounting for a whim.  I make it a point to gratify every one that strikes me.  I confess to being eccentric, you know.”

“You must get an enormous amount of gratification out of this,” she said dryly.  “What if the other man should happen along?”

“Scarcely at Asquith.”

“I have known stranger things to occur,” said she.

The Celebrity smiled and smoked.

“I’ll wager, now,” he went on, “that you little thought to find me here incognito.  But it is delicious, I assure you, to lead once more a commonplace and unmolested existence.”

“Delightful,” said Miss Thorn.

“People never consider an author apart from his work, you know, and I confess I had a desire to find out how I would get along.  And there comes a time when a man wishes he had never written a book, and a longing to be sought after for his own sake and to be judged on his own merits.  And then it is a great relief to feel that one is not at the beck and call of any one and every one wherever one goes, and to know that one is free to choose one’s own companions and do as one wishes.”

“The sentiment is good,” Miss Thorn agreed, “very good.  But doesn’t it seem a little odd, Mr. Crocker,” she continued, appealing to me, “that a man should take the pains to advertise a trip to Europe in order to gratify a whim of this sort?”

“It is indeed incomprehensible to me,” I replied, with a kind of grim pleasure, “but you must remember that I have always led a commonplace existence.”

Although the Celebrity was almost impervious to sarcasm, he was now beginning to exhibit visible signs of uneasiness, the consciousness dawning upon him that his eccentricity was not receiving the ovation it merited.  It was with a palpable relief that he heard the first warning notes of the figure.

“Am I to understand that you wish me to do my part in concealing your identity?” asked Miss Thorn, cutting him short as he was expressing pleasure at her arrival.

“If you will be so kind,” he answered, and departed with a bow.  There was a mischievous mirth in her eye as she took her place in the window.  Below in the ball-room sat Miss Trevor surrounded by men, and I saw her face lighting at the Celebrity’s approach.