"I was introduced as Jack C., of Virginia."
"Yes? And in what arm?"
"Cavalry," I replied promptly. "Do you not see the yellow?" I gestured toward the facings. "You who belong to the Army ought to know."
"Why do you think I belong to the Army?" she asked, in a voice whose low sweetness was enough to impel any man to catch the mask from her face and throw it down the nearest well.
"You belong to the Army, and to Virginia," I said, "because you asked me what is my arm of the service; and because your voice could come from nowhere but Virginia. Now since I have come so far to see you and have found you out so soon, why do you not confess that you are Miss Ellen? Tell me your name, so that I may not be awkward!"
"We have no names to-night," she answered. "But I was just thinking; there is no Jack C. in the Gazette who comes from Virginia and who wears a captain's straps. I do not know who you are."
"At least the game then is fair," said I, disappointed. "But I promise you that some time I shall see you face to face, and without masks. To-morrow—"
"Tut, tut!" she reproved. "There is no to-morrow!"
I looked down on her as I stood, and a certain madness of youth seized hold upon me. I knew that when she rose she would be just tall enough; that she would be round, full, perfect woman in every line of her figure; that her hair would be some sort of dark brown in the daylight; that her eyes would also be of some sort of darkness, I knew not what, for I could not see them fully through the domino. I could see the hair piled back from the nape of as lovely a neck as ever caught a kiss. I could see at the edge of the mask that her ear was small and close to the head; could see that her nose must be straight, and that it sprang from the brow strongly, with no weak indentation. The sweep of a strong, clean chin was not to be disguised, and at the edge of the mask I caught now and then the gleam of white, even teeth, and the mocking smile of red, strongly curved lips, hid by her fan at the very moment when I was about to fix them in my memory, so that I might see them again and know. I suspect she hid a smile, but her eyes looked up at me grandly and darkly. Nineteen, perhaps twenty, I considered her age to be; gentle, and yet strong, with character and yet with tenderness, I made estimate that she must be; and that she had more brains than to be merely a lay figure I held sure, because there was something, that indefinable magnetism, what you like to call it, which is not to be denied, which assured me that here indeed was a woman not lightly to accept, nor lightly to be forgotten. Ah, now I was seized and swept on in a swift madness. Still the music sang on.
"My hostess said it would be a lottery to-night in this Row of Mystery," I went on, "but I do not find it so."