“Then I should take her mask off for her.”

“It is impossible to do that with a woman,” said Fabio.  “I prefer trying to lose her in the crowd.  Excuse me, gentlemen, if I leave you to finish the wine, and then to meet me, if you like, in the great ballroom.”

He retired as he spoke, put on his mask, and joined the dancers immediately, taking care to keep always in the most crowded corner of the apartment.  For some time this plan of action proved successful, and he saw no more of the mysterious yellow domino.  Ere long, however, some new dances were arranged, in which the great majority of the persons in the ballroom took part; the figures resembling the old English country dances in this respect, that the ladies and gentlemen were placed in long rows opposite to each other.  The sets consisted of about twenty couples each, placed sometimes across, and sometimes along the apartment; and the spectators were all required to move away on either side, and range themselves close to the walls.  As Fabio among others complied with this necessity, he looked down a row of dancers waiting during the performance of the orchestral prelude; and there, watching him again, from the opposite end of the lane formed by the gentlemen on one side and the ladies on the other, he saw the Yellow Mask.

He moved abruptly back, toward another row of dancers, placed at right angles to the first row; and there again; at the opposite end of the gay lane of brightly-dressed figures, was the Yellow Mask.  He slipped into the middle of the room, but it was only to find her occupying his former position near the wall, and still, in spite of his disguise, watching him through row after row of dancers.  The persecution began to grow intolerable; he felt a kind of angry curiosity mingling now with the vague dread that had hitherto oppressed him.  Finello’s advice recurred to his memory; and he determined to make the woman unmask at all hazards.  With this intention he returned to the supper-room in which he had left his friends.

They were gone, probably to the ballroom, to look for him.  Plenty of wine was still left on the sideboard, and he poured himself out a glass.  Finding that his hand trembled as he did so, he drank several more glasses in quick succession, to nerve himself for the approaching encounter with the Yellow Mask.  While he was drinking he expected every moment to see her in the looking-glass again; but she never appeared—­and yet he felt almost certain that he had detected her gliding out after him when he left the ballroom.

He thought it possible that she might be waiting for him in one of the smaller apartments, and, taking off his mask, walked through several of them without meeting her, until he came to the door of the refreshment-room in which Nanina and he had recognized each other.  The waiting-woman behind the table, who had first spoken to him, caught sight of him now, and ran round to the door.