“Doesn’t it make you wish to dance?” said Farrar to her.  “It is hard luck you should be doomed to spend the evening with two such useless fellows as we are.”

She did not catch his remark at first, as was natural in a person preoccupied.  Then she bit her lips to repress a smile.

“I assure you, Mr. Farrar,” she said with force, “I have never in my life wished to dance as little as I do now.”

But a voice interrupted her, and the scarlet coat of the Celebrity was thrust into the light between us.  Farrar excused himself abruptly and disappeared.

“Never wished to dance less!” cried the Celebrity.  “Upon my word, Miss Thorn, that’s too bad.  I came up to ask you to reconsider your determination, as one of the girls from Asquith is leaving, and there is an extra man.”

“You are very kind,” said Miss Thorn, quietly, “but I prefer to remain here.”

My surmise, then, was correct.  She had evidently met the Celebrity, and there was that in his manner of addressing her, without any formal greeting, which seemed to point to a close acquaintance.

“You know Mr. Allen, then, Miss Thorn?” said I.

“What can you mean?” she exclaimed, wheeling on me; “this is not Mr. Allen.”

“Hang you, Crocker,” the Celebrity put in impatiently; “Miss Thorn knows who I am as well as you do.”

“I confess it is a little puzzling,” said she; “perhaps it is because I am tired from travelling, and my brain refuses to work.  But why in the name of all that is strange do you call him Mr. Allen?”

The Celebrity threw himself into the chair beside her and asked permission to light a cigarette.

“I am going to ask you the favor of respecting my incognito, Miss Thorn, as Crocker has done,” he said.  “Crocker knew me in the East, too.  I had not counted upon finding him at Asquith.”

Miss Thorn straightened herself and made a gesture of impatience.

“An incognito!” she cried.  “But you have taken another man’s name.  And you already had his face and figure!”

I jumped.

“That is so,” he calmly returned; “the name was ready to hand, and so I took it.  I don’t imagine it will make any difference to him.  It’s only a whim of mine, and with me there’s no accounting for a whim.  I make it a point to gratify every one that strikes me.  I confess to being eccentric, you know.”

“You must get an enormous amount of gratification out of this,” she said dryly.  “What if the other man should happen along?”

“Scarcely at Asquith.”

“I have known stranger things to occur,” said she.

The Celebrity smiled and smoked.

“I’ll wager, now,” he went on, “that you little thought to find me here incognito.  But it is delicious, I assure you, to lead once more a commonplace and unmolested existence.”

“Delightful,” said Miss Thorn.