ek's subscription?" he repeated with mock
incredulity. "A whole week--seven days and nights? Oh, no! No! No! I
don't think you've given me, yet, more than about--four days' worth to
think about. Just about four days' worth, I should think."

Pushing the pink veil further and further back from her features, with
plainly quivering hands, the girl's whole soul seemed to blaze out at
him suddenly, and then wince back again. Then just as quickly a droll
little gleam of malice glinted in her eyes.

"Oh, all right then," she smiled. "If you really think I've given you
only four days' and nights' worth of thoughts--here's something for
the fifth day and night."

Very casually, yet still very accurately, her right hand reached out
to the knob of the door.

"To cancel my debt for the fifth day," she said, "do you really
'honest-injun' want to know who I am? I'll tell you! First, you've
seen me before."

"What?" cried Stanton, plunging forward in his chair.

Something in the girl's quick clutch of the door-knob warned him quite
distinctly to relax again into his cushions.

"Yes," she repeated triumphantly. "And you've talked with me too, as
often as twice! And moreover you've danced with me!"

Tossing her head with sudden-born daring she reached up and snatched
off her curly black wig, and shook down all around her such a great,
shining, utterly glorious mass of mahogany colored hair that Stanton's
astonishment turned almost into faintness.

"What?" he cried out. "What? You say I've seen you before? Talked with
you? Waltzed with you, perhaps? Never! I haven't! I tell you I
haven't! I never saw that hair before! If I had, I shouldn't have
forgotten it to my dying day. Why--"

With a little wail of despair she leaned back against the door. "You
don't even remember me _now_?" she mourned. "Oh dear, dear, dear! And
I thought _you_ were so beautiful!" Then, woman-like, her whole
sympathy rushed to defend him from her own accusations. "Oh, well, it
was at a masquerade party," she acknowledged generously, "and I
suppose you go to a great many masquerades."

Heaping up her hair like so much molten copper into the hood of her
cloak, and trying desperately to snare all the wild, escaping tendrils
with the softer mesh of her veil, she reached out a free hand at last
and opened the door just a crack.

"And to give you something to think about for the sixth day and
night," she resumed suddenly, with the same strange little glint