“What a lovely excuse!  But there’s nothing in my affair to make a story of.”

I smiled majestically.

“You stick to your art—­leave me to manage mine.”  And I put a light to his cigarette.

“Ah, but you’ll be disappointed this time, I warrant,” he said laughingly, as the smoke circled round his diabolically handsome face.  Then, becoming serious again, he went on:  “It’s so terribly plebeian, yet it all befell through that very Kunstner Karneval.  I was telling you of when I first wore this composite costume which gained me the smile of royalty.  It was a very swell affair, of course, not a bit like this, but it was given in hell.”

“In hell!” I cried, startled.

“Yes. Underverden they call it in their lingo.  The ball-room of the palace (the Palaeet, an old disused mansion) was got up to represent the infernal regions—­you tumble?—­and everybody had to dress appropriately.  That was what gave me the idea of this costume.  The staircase up which you entered was made the mouth of a great dragon, and as you trod on the first step his eye gleamed blazes and brimstone.  There were great monsters all about, and dark grottoes radiating around; and when you took your dame into one of them, your tread flooded them with light.  If, however, the cavalier modestly conducted his mistress into one of the lighted caves, virtue was rewarded by instantaneous darkness.”

“That was really artistic,” I said, laughing.

“You bet!  The artists spent any amount of money over the affair.  The whole of Hades bristled with ingenious devices in every corner.  I had got a couple of tickets, and had designed the dress of my best girl, as well as my own, and the morning before (there being little work done in the studios that day, as you may well imagine) I called upon her to see her try it on.  To my chagrin I found she was down with influenza, or something of that sort appropriate to the bitter winter we were having.  And it did freeze that year, by Jove!—­so hard that Denmark and Sweden were united—­to their mutual disgust, I fancy—­by a broad causeway of ice.  I remember, as I walked back from the girl’s house towards the town along the Langelinie, my mortification was somewhat allayed by the picturesque appearance of the Sound, in whose white expanse boats of every species and colour were embedded, looking like trapped creatures unable to stir oar or sail.  But as I left the Promenade and came into the narrow old streets of the town, with their cobblestones and their quaint, many-windowed houses, my ill-humour returned.  I had had some trouble in getting the second ticket, and now it looked as if I should get left.  I went over in my mind the girls I could ask, and what with not caring more for one than for another, and not knowing which were booked already, and what with the imminence of the ball, I felt the little brains I had getting addled in my head.  At last, in sheer despair, I had