"You mean to keep it?"

"I must."

"Why?"

"It was my father's wish."

"And yet--you don't like him!"

Looking steadily before her, the girl said tensely: "I loathe him."

"Then," cried P. Sybarite in a joyful voice, "I may tell you something: you needn't marry him."

She turned startled eyes to his, incredulous.

"_Need_ not?"

"I should have said _can_ not--"

Through the loud hum of voices that, filling the room, had furnished a cover for their conversation, sounded the opening bars of music for the final dance.

The girl rose suddenly, eyes like stars aflame in a face of snow.

"He will be coming for me now," she said hurriedly. "But--if you mean what you say--I must know--instantly--why you say it. How can we manage to avoid him?"

"This way," said P. Sybarite, indicating the wide window nearby.

Through its draped opening a shallow balcony showed, half-screened by palms whose softly stirring fronds, touched with artificial light, shone a garish green against the sombre sky of night.

Immediately Marian Blessington slipped through the hangings and, turning, beckoned P. Sybarite to follow.

"There's no one here," she announced in accents tremulous with excitement, when he joined her. "Now--_now_ tell me what you mean!"

"One moment," he warned her gently, turning back to the window just as it was darkened by another figure.

The man with the twisted mouth stood there, peering blindly into the semi-obscurity.

"Marian...?" he called in a voice meant to be ingratiating.

"Well?" the girl demanded harshly.

"I thought I saw you," he commented blandly, advancing a pace and so coming face to face with the bristling little Mephistophelean figure, which he had endeavoured to ignore.

"My dance, I believe," he added a trace more brusquely, over the little man's head.

"I must ask you to excuse me," said the girl coldly.

"You don't care to dance again to-night?"

"Thank you--no."

"Then I will give myself the pleasure of sitting it out with you."

"I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me, Bayard," she returned, consistently inflexible.

He hesitated. "Do I understand you're ready for me to take you home?"

"You're to understand that I will neither dance nor sit out the dance with you--and that I don't wish to be disturbed."

"Bless your heart!" P. Sybarite interjected privately.

The voice of the younger Shaynon broke with pa.s.sion.

"This is--the limit!" he cried violently. "I've reached the end of my endurance. Who's this creature you're with?"

"Is your memory so short?" P. Sybarite asked quietly. "Have you forgotten the microbe?--the little guy who puts the point in disappointment?"

"I've forgotten nothing, you--animal! Nor that you insulted my father publicly only a few minutes ago, you--"

"That is something that takes a bit of doing, too!" affirmed P.

Sybarite with a nod.

"And I want to inform you, sir," Shaynon raged, "that you've gone too far by much. I insist that you remove your mask and tell me your name."

"And if I refuse?" said the little man coolly.

"If you refuse--or if you persist in this insolent att.i.tude, sir!--I--I'll--"

"_What?_ In the name of brevity, make up your mind and give it a name, man!"

"I'll thrash you within an inch of your life--here and now!" Shaynon bl.u.s.tered.

"One moment," P. Sybarite pleaded with a graceful gesture. "Before committing yourself to this mad enterprise, would you mind telling me exactly how you spell that word _inch_? With a capital _I_ and a final _e_--by any chance?"

XVII

IN A BALCONY

Bewilderment and consternation, working in the man, first struck him dumb, aghast, and witless, then found expression in an involuntary gasp that was more than half of wondering fear, the remainder rage slipping its leash entirely:

"_What?_"

He advanced a pace with threatening mien.

Overshadowed though he was, P. Sybarite stood his ground with no least hint of dismay. To the contrary, he was seen to stroke his lips discreetly as if to erase a smile.