She half-rose from the divan.
“You?” she stammered nervously. “Is it you?”
He whipped off his mask.
“Who else? Did this deceive you?”—dangling the strip of velvet from his finger, and regarding her with quizzical grey eyes. “I’ve been hunting for you everywhere. I’d almost made up my mind that you had gone to bed like a good little girl. And then my patron saint—or was it the special devil told off to look after me, I wonder?—prompted me to look in here. Et vous voilà, mademoiselle! How are you feeling after your exploits in the snow?”
He spoke very rapidly, in a light half-mocking tone that seemed to Joan to make the happenings of the afternoon unreal and remote. His eyes were very bright, almost defiant in their expression—holding a suggestion of recklessness, as though he were embarked upon something of which his inmost self refused to approve but which he was nevertheless determined to carry through.
“So you did ‘call to enquire,’ after all!”
As she spoke, Jean’s mouth curled up at the corners in an involuntary little smile of amused recollection.
“So I did call after all?” He looked puzzled—not unnaturally, since he had no clue to her thoughts. “What do you mean? I came”—he went on lightly—“because I wanted the rest of the day which you promised to share with me. The proceedings were cut short rather abruptly this afternoon.”
“But how did you get here?” she asked. “And—and why did you disappear so suddenly after we got back to the hotel this afternoon?”
“I got here by the aid of a pair of excellent skis and the light of the moon; the snow ceased some hours ago and the surface is hardening nicely. I disappeared because, as I told you, if you gave me this one day, it should bind you to nothing—not even to introducing me to your friends.”