you taking off your decoration? Leave it where it is. It's yours."

"Yes, I suppose it is." Robert Kater brushed his hand across his eyes
and stepped down from the throne. Then lifting his head and shoulders
as if he threw off a burden, he leaped from the dais, and with one
long howl, began an Indian war dance. He was the center and life of
the hilarious crowd from that moment. The selection of materials had
been made. A curtain of royal purple hung behind the throne, and this
they threw around him as a toga, then crowned him as Mark Antony. They
found for him also a tunic of soft wool, and with a strip of gold
braid they converted a pair of sheepskin bedroom slippers into
sandals, bound on his feet over his short socks.

"I say! Mark Antony never wore things like these," he shouted. "Give
me a mask. I'll not wear these things without a mask." He snatched at
the head of the owl, who ducked under his arm and escaped. "Go then.
This is better. Mark, the illustrious, was an ass." He made a dive for
the head of his braying friend and barely missed him.

"Come. We waste time. Cleopatra awaits him at 'la Fourchette d'or';
all our Cleopatras await us there."

"Surely?"

"Surely. Madame la Charne is there and the sisters Lucie and
Bertha,--all are there,--and with them one very beautiful blonde whom
you have never seen."

"She is for you--you cold Scotchman! That stone within you, which you
call heart, to-night it will melt."

"You have everything planned then?"

"Everything is made ready."

"Look here! Wait, my friends! I haven't expressed myself yet." They
were preparing to lift him above their heads. "I wish to say that you
are all to share my good fortune and allow--"

"Wait for the champagne. You can say it then with more force."

"I say! Hold on! I ask you to--"

"So we do. We hold on. Now, up--so." He was borne in triumph down the
stairs and out on the street and away to the sign of the Golden Fork,
and seated at the head of the table in a small banquet room opening
off from the balcony at one side where the feast which had been
ordered and prepared was awaiting them.

A group of masked young women, gathered on the balcony, pelted them
with flowers as they passed beneath it, and when the men were all
seated, they trooped out, and each slid into her appointed place,
still masked.

Then came a confusion of tongues, badinage, repartee, wit undiluted by
discretion--and rippling laughter as one mask after an