e around the room with me faster and faster, and with ever increasing
fury. Her arms gripped me tighter and tighter and I was threatened
with complete loss of breath in the wild race. Of a sudden I received a
violent blow, resembling an electric shock, from each of her hands on
my shoulders, felt myself all at once liberated, and staggered faint
against a pyramid of plants. Boisterous laughter sounded on my ear; some
other masks had surrounded and seized me, exclaiming:

"Look at the fine gentleman! He is out of his mind, dancing about the
room like a madman, quite alone!"

I opened my eyes and looked all around. What had become of my partner?

Not a sign of her was to be seen, although this other room was likewise
very large, just then not well filled with people.

"Have I been dancing alone?" I gasped, tearing the mask off my burning
face.

"Quite alone! Did you imagine it was with your sweetheart?" was the
mocking, noisy reply.

I was deeply annoyed. "Nonsense!" I cried. "You are all in the
conspiracy! Where has the nun gone? It was no lady at all, it was a man
in disguise!"

They laughed still more, and some whispered behind fans that I must be
drunk.

Strange sensations invaded me. Had a joke been played at my expense? Had
a member of the German legation dressed in female clothes, and in the
height of his whimsical caprice danced with me in that insane fashion?
Were the guests in the secret, and were they amusing themselves--as the
freedom of the carnival permitted--with teasing a foreigner? Yet surely
the mysterious nun must be discoverable. My knees were trembling from a
weakness I was unable to account for, but I collected myself, and
while various thoughts coursed through my brain for a solution of
this carnival prank, I hastened with feverish speed through rooms and
galleries in quest of the nun. But in vain. I espied neither herself,
nor met anyone who had seen her. The lackeys and doorkeepers assured me
in perfect good faith that they had seen no nun of any sort.

"The costume is one of which His Majesty does not approve," I was
informed in the cloak-room. "It is considered irreverent to appear at
balls here in the spiritual garb of a nun or a monk, and therefore it
is not done. It would certainly have been observed by us had any lady or
gentleman transgressed against the prevailing usage."

"Then perhaps I may have mistaken for a nun some other mask, who
intended in her gray suit to represent Tw