"This is my second year."
Still laughing, she shook her shrouded little head at him. "But I cannot understand! What wonderful thing do you hope to find—what buried secret—?"
"Nothing half as wonderful as to know who you are," he said boldly.
"That, too, is—is buried, monsieur!"
"But not beyond discovery," he told her very gayly and confidently, and danced the music out.
As the last strains died, they paused for an instant as if the spell still bound them, then his arms fell slowly away, and he heard the girl draw a quick, startled breath. Her eyes sped to that tiny, blazing watch; when she lifted them he thought he surprised a gleam of panic.
"How fast is an hour!" she said with an excited little laugh. "Time is a—a very sudden thing!"
Sudden, indeed! How long since he had been a badly bored, impatient young man, mocking the follies of the masquerade? How long since he had danced with Jinny, flouting her notion of this sort of thing as life? How long since he had looked into a pair of dark disquieting eyes ... listened to a gay little voice....
Many important things in life happen suddenly. Juliet happened very suddenly to Romeo. Romeo happened as suddenly to Juliet.
But Jack Ryder was not remembering anything about Romeo and Juliet. He was watching that glance steal to the wrist watch again.