Page:Under three flags; a story of mystery (IA underthreeflagss00tayliala).pdf/122

 "until I have thanked you a thousand times for the service you have rendered me."

Don Caesar bows. "As for the service," he remarks lightly, "it was nothing. The fellow has been drinking, and seeing you alone"

"My friends have left me only for a few moments," Louise hastens to explain, as she glances over the floor and bites her lips in vexation.

"Then I may remain until they return?" Don Caesar observes inquiringly, dropping into a chair. "Some other graceless scamp may blunder in here."

Louise's eyes express a timid assent to the proposition.

"This is the first of these balls that you have attended?" asks Don Caesar, noting that she is ill at ease.

"Yes; and it will be the last. I had read much of them, how brilliant they were, and all that, and I naturally acquiesced when I was tempted with an invitation. For I was told that if one went masked there was no harm in looking on for an hour."

"Nor is there. The wickedness will not begin for some time, and it is at best, or worst, a cheap, tawdry wickedness, wholly unattractive to saint or sinner. It is all inexpressibly stupid. A lot of tinsel-decked people rushing hither and thither in the dance, with little regard for the rhythm of the music and less for the etiquette of the ball-room, and a line of weary clubmen, bankers, men-about-town, butchers and bakers and candlestick-*makers looking on."

"Yet you attend, though your remark indicates familiarity with the function."

"Oh, yes, I attend. For in spite of it all there are flowers and music, light and color and a certain brilliancy that enables one to forget for the nonce the even deadlier stupidity of the outside world."

"Don Caesar de Bazan of old was not a cynic," remarks Louise, smilingly.

"Had he been he would not have maintained our evergreen regard. When we sit down to a book or a play we like to leave our cynicism behind us; to live with men who have not a care beyond the morrow; men who