Unconsciously her hand strayed to her temple, and dropped.
"Whoever you are, you seem acquainted with certain youthful adventures. But some one might have told you these things, thinking to annoy me." Then the light in her eyes grew dim with the struggle of retrospection, the effort to pierce the veil of absent years, and to place me among the useless, forgotten things of youth, or rather childhood. "No, I can not place you. Please tell me who you are, if I have ever known you."
"Not just now. Mystery arouses a woman's curiosity, and I frankly confess that I wish to arouse yours. You are nearly, if not quite, twenty-four."
"One does not win a woman's interest by telling her her age."
"But I add that you do not look it."
"That is better. Now, let me see the slipper," holding out her hand.
"To no one but Cinderella. I'd be a nice prince, wouldn't I, to surrender the slipper without finding Cinderella!"
"In these days no woman would permit you to put on her slipper, unless you were her husband or her brother."
"No? Then I have a much perverted idea of society."
"And,"—passing over my remark, "she would rather sit in a corner all the evening."