At Beelzebub’s approach the Incroyable, perhaps mindful of obligations in another quarter, bowed and moved off, leaving the field temporarily quite clear.

She greeted him with a faint recurrence of her former blush.

“Why, Peter!” she cried—­and so sealed with confirmation his surmise as to her mistake—­“I was wondering what had become of you.  I thought you must have gone home.”

“Peter did go home,” P. Sybarite affirmed gravely, bending over her hand.

His voice perplexed her tremendously.  She opened eyes wide.

“Peter!” she exclaimed reproachfully—­“you promised it wouldn’t make any difference.  We were to go on just as always—­good friends.  And now ...”

“Yes?” P. Sybarite prompted as she faltered.

“I don’t like to say it, Peter, but—­your voice is so different.  You’ve not been—­doing anything foolish, have you?”

“Peter hasn’t,” the little man lied cheerfully; “Peter went home to sulk like the unwhipped cub he is; and sulking, was yet decent enough to lend me these rags.”

“You—­you’re not Peter Kenny?”

“No more than you are Molly Lessing.”

“Molly Lessing!  What do you know—?  Who can you be?  Why are you masked?”

“Simply,” he explained pleasantly, “that my incognito may remain such to all save you.”

“But—­but who are you?”

“It is permitted?” he asked, with a gesture offering to take the tiny printed card of dance engagements that dangled from her fingers by its silken thong.

In dumb mystification the girl surrendered it.

Seating himself beside her, P. Sybarite ran his eye down the list.

“The last was number—­which?” he enquired with unruffled impudence.

Half angry, half amused, wholly confused, she told him:  “Fifteen.”

“Then one number only remains.”

His lips hardened as he read the initials pencilled opposite that numeral; they were “B.S.”

“Bayard Shaynon?” he queried.

She assented with a nod, her brows gathering.

Coolly, with the miniature pencil attached to the card, he changed the small, faint B to a large black P, strengthened the S to correspond, and added to that ybarite; then with a bow returned the card.

The girl received the evidence of her senses with a silent gasp.

He bowed again:  “Yours to command.”

“You—­Mr. Sybarite!”

“I, Miss Blessington.”

“But—­incredible!” she cried.  “I can’t believe you ...”

Facing her, he lifted his scarlet visor, meeting her stare with his wistful and diffident smile.

[Illustration:  Facing her, he lifted his scarlet visor.]

“You see,” he said, readjusting the mask.

“But—­what does this mean?”

“Do you remember our talk on the way home after Kismet—­four hours or several years ago:  which is it?”