"What--you, Lucifer! Traitor! Where have you been all evening?"
"Madame!"--he bowed mockingly--"in spirit, always at your ear."
She flushed and bit her lip in charming confusion; while an abbess,
with face serene in the frame of her snowy coif, caught up the ball of
badinage:
"Ah, in spirit! But in the flesh?"
"Why, poppet!" he retorted in suave surprise--"it isn't possible that
_you_ missed me?"
And she, too, coloured; while a third, a girl dressed all in buckskin
from beaded hunting-shirt to fringed leggings and dainty moccasins,
bent to peer into his face.
"Who are you?" she demanded curiously. "I don't seem to know you--"
"That, child, you have already proved."
"I?... Proved?... How do you mean?"
"You alone have not yet blushed."
And wheeling mischievously to the others, he covered them with
widespread hands in burlesque benediction.
"The unction of my deep damnation abide with ye, my children, now and
forevermore!" he chanted, showering sparks from crepitant finger-tips;
and bounded lightly into the elevator.
"But your mask!" protested Scheherazade in a pet. "You've no
right--when we all unmasked at supper."
Through the iron fretwork of the gate, the little gentleman shot a
Parthian spark or two.
"I wear no mask!" he informed them solemnly as the car shot from
sight.
The conceit tickled him; he had it still in mind when he alighted at
the ball-room floor.
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