other was torn
off.

"Ah, how glad I am to be rid of it! I was suffocating," said a soft
voice at Robert Kater's side.

He looked down quickly into a pair of clear, red-brown eyes--eyes into
which he had never looked before.

"Then we are both content that it is off." He smiled as he spoke. She
glanced up at him, then down and away. When she lifted her eyes an
instant later again to his face, he was no longer regarding her. She
was piqued, and quickly began conversing with the man on her left, the
one who had removed her mask.

"It is no use, your smile, mademoiselle. He is impervious, that man.
He has no sense or he could not turn his eyes away."

"I like best the impervious ones." With a light ripple of laughter she
turned again to her right. "Monsieur has forgotten?"

"Forgotten?" Robert was mystified until he realized in the instant
that she was pretending to a former acquaintance. "Could I forget,
mademoiselle? Permit me." He lifted his glass. "To your eyes--and to
your--memory," he said, and drank it off.

After that he became the gayest of them all, and the merriment never
flagged. He ate heartily, for he was very hungry, but he drank
sparingly. His brain seemed supplied with intellectual missiles which
he hurled right and left, but when they struck, it was only to send
out a rain of sparks like the balls of holiday fireworks that explode
in a fountain of brilliance and hurt no one.

"Monsieur is so gay!" said the soft voice of the blonde at his side.

"Are we not here for that, to enjoy ourselves?"

"Ah, if I could but believe that you remember me!"

"Is it possible mademoiselle thinks herself one to be so easily
forgotten?"

"Monsieur, tell me the truth." She glanced up archly. "I have one very
good reason for asking."

"You are very beautiful."

"But that is so banal--that remark."

"You complain that I tell you the truth when you ask it? You have so
often heard it that the telling becomes banal? Shall I continue?"

"But it is of yourself that I would hear."

"So? Then it is as I feared. It is you who have forgotten."

They were interrupted at that moment, for he was called upon for a
story, and he related one of his life as a soldier,--a little
incident, but everything pleased. They called upon him for another and
another. The hour grew late, and at last the banqueters rose and began
to remask and assume their various characters.

"What are you, monsieur, with that very strange dress