CHAPTER ONE
I
A young man of twenty-seven, a dashing Count d'Orsay type, was sitting astride a chair in flat number fifteen, one of the three-room flats in the Lorillard model tenement houses. He was alone in the room but evidently not in the flat, for he was directing animated remarks at one of two closed doors that flanked a projecting china cupboard.
"It's to be a masked ball, Cornelia," he was saying, "and I'm going as the head of John the Baptist."
Two feminine voices, one from behind the door, laughed merrily. Much pleased, the young man continued:
"Or I might go as a Spanish cavalier. The costume in Whistler's painting of 'Henry Irving as Philip II' would suit me to a T."
"Claude, I know what you're thinking of," returned a well-pitched voice behind the right door. "You're not thinking of the part of Philip II, but of the part of Don Juan, in which you expect to be irresistible."
"Gee," added kittenish tones behind the door. "It'd be a good sight better if he went as a penitent friar."
"Leading you attired as Salome, I dare say."
"Oh, no, I mean to go as St. Cecilia."