“I don’t know if I am justified in asking for a dance,” Carey said.  “My own dancing days are over.”

She smiled at him, and instantly the weariness vanished.  There was magic in her smile.

“I am no dancer either, except with the little ones.  If you care to sit out with me, I shall be very pleased.”

Her voice was low and musical.  It caught his fancy so that he was aware of a sudden curiosity to see the face that the black mask concealed.

“Give me the twelve-o’clock dance,” he said, “if you can spare it!”

She consulted the programme that hung from her wrist.  He bent over it as she held it, and scrawled his initials against the dance in question.

“Perhaps I shall not stay for that one,” she said, with slight hesitation.

He glanced up at her.

“I thought you were here for the night.”

She bent her head.

“But I may slip away before twelve for all that.”

Carey smiled.

“I don’t think you will, not anyhow if I have a voice in the matter.  I am Gwen’s lieutenant, you know, specially enrolled to prevent any deserting.  There is a heavy penalty for desertion.”

“What is it?”

Carey bent again over the programme.

“Deserters will be brought back ignominiously and made to dance with everyone in the room in turn.”

He glanced up again at the sound of her low laugh.  There was something elusively suggestive about her personality.

“May I have another?” he said.  “I hope you don’t mind holding the card for me.”

“You have hurt your hand?” she asked.

It was thrust away, as usual, in his pocket.

“Some years ago,” he told her.  “I don’t use it more than I can help.”

“How disagreeable for you!” she murmured.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“I am used to it.  It is worse for others than it is for me.  May I have No. 9?  It includes the supper interval.  Thanks!  And any more you can spare.  I’m only lounging about and seeing that the kids enjoy themselves.  I shall be delighted to sit out with you when you are tired of dancing.”

“You are very kind,” she said.

He made her an abrupt bow.

“Then I hope you won’t snub my efforts by deserting?”

She laughed again.

“No, lieutenant, I will not desert.  I am going to help you.”

She spoke with a winning and impulsive graciousness that stirred again within him that curious sense of groping in the dark among objects familiar but unrecognisable.  Surely he had met this stranger somewhere before—­in a crowded thoroughfare, in a train, possibly in a theatre, or even in a church!

She looked at him questioningly as he lingered, and with another bow he turned and left her.  Doubtless, when he saw her face he would remember, or realise that he had been mistaken.

VI