I danced, to mighty good music, with a crowned queen of Tudorish bodice, modified by electric lights on the sleeves; with a green-robed girl of red hair with amber lights on her comb; with a white-shouldered Cleopatra, lithe and soft in my arms.
I danced again with Cleopatra and, after midnight, a couple of times more and was having a better time with each encore. Also I was getting acclimated to the diverting atmosphere of that ball. Its manners, of course, were various and, as I explained to myself the different developments, each masker made for himself a personal interpretation of his rôle according to his costume; consequently I witnessed the Puritanical portrayed in contrast with the piratical between which extremes the private lighting plants extemporized pirouettes of their own.
There was plenty of cheek-to-cheek proximity of partners; plenty of knee to knee. Occasionally a floor committeeman pried a couple a few inches farther apart; but surely it is better to see that done than to observe the need ignored.
Jerry, unless he returned in some new costume, remained away from the floor; and I gave up momentarily expecting him. I got to having a good time on my own account, especially with Cleopatra.
I could not see her face between her brow and lips. Through her mask, I got glimpse enough of her irises to see that they were blue. Her forehead was smooth and white and pretty; intelligent looking, too. Her lips were bowed and smiled pleasantly and were not too much carmined; she had a fine little chin, pretty and also firm. She’d a lovely neck and shoulders, smooth as satin; and she’d small, strong little hands with beautiful, pink nails, and slender, shapely feet.
I’m not given to noticing quite so much about a girl; but with this one, I couldn’t help it. She was an alluring little crook. I suppose the vizor had something to do with it; the hidden always beckons a fellow on; but what kept me coming was the thought,—what was she doing there? What was her line or her lay? If she were merely a guest of this ball, whose guest was she?
Naturally, at a masque—and most naturally at that masque—people dispensed with introductions. She was Cleopatra and no one gave her a modern name; as Cleopatra she lacked a Cæsar, though many were present. She lacked even an Anthony; a Magellanic mariner seemed to be her rallying point. I don’t know why I called the gentleman Magellan; if he’d been huskier I’d have called him Columbus. Somehow I’ve always imagined Magellan quick and slight and more given to liquor than Columbus. This mariner was; given to liquor, I mean. Cleopatra bothered about him for a time and then blithely abandoned him, much to my benefit.
“What shall I call you?” she asked me. So far, we had got on without names.
“Erasmus,” I said, to try her as much as anything.
To my amazement, she knew the old boy. “Holbein would be thrilled by you.” And, as she danced with my arm about her, I could feel that she was sizing me up anew. I had said “Erasmus” as I might have said Claude or Skeezix; but since she knew Erasmus, naturally she wondered how I knew. Beets, my predecessor in these garments, would not have known; but Cleopatra had known for some time that I was not Beets.