Page:Jackson Gregory--joyous trouble maker.djvu/324

308 when man's will is shoved aside and set at naught by passing events, he was not to see her.

Until after midnight the dance went gaily on. Staring moodily at the dancers, guessing the identities of none of them save that of a negligible and insignificant little widow who bored him, he shaped and discarded a score of explanations of Beatrice's absence. He would wait until the end, when the unmasking came ... And then, at last, it was the negligible and insignificant little widow who bored him who announced that there was to be no unmasking! Just to make this dance different from others, she cried out gaily in the last lull before the good night valse; just so that to-morrow there might be those who wondered if they had blundered ...

Many acclaimed the suggestion with clapping hands; Steele's greeting to it was a disgusted "Damn!" Was this some of Beatrice's work? Had she told the exasperating Mrs. Denham what to say? Had she again changed her costume, coming back long ago, dancing with the rest, laughing behind a new mask at Steele's idiocy? And Embry, had she taken him in with her on her stroke of retaliation, had he, too, simply changed and come back to the others?

For an instant he wondered; then he knew. Beatrice could not hide herself from him like this. He would know her in any garb. And he'd know Joe Embry, too.

The dance was over. Couples strolled, loitered, said lingering or sleepy good nights and disappeared, going to their rooms. And Steele knew, as well as he knew