“Everything is made ready.”
“Look here! Wait, my friends! I haven’t expressed myself yet.” They were preparing to lift him above their heads. “I wish to say that you are all to share my good fortune and allow––”
“Wait for the champagne. You can say it then with more force.”
“I say! Hold on! I ask you to––”
“So we do. We hold on. Now, up––so.” He was borne in triumph down the stairs and out on the street and away to the sign of the Golden Fork, and seated at the head of the table in a small banquet room opening off from the balcony at one side where the feast which had been ordered and prepared was awaiting them.
A group of masked young women, gathered on the balcony, pelted them with flowers as they passed beneath it, and when the men were all seated, they trooped out, and each slid into her appointed place, still masked.
Then came a confusion of tongues, badinage, repartee, wit undiluted by discretion––and rippling laughter as one mask after another was torn off.
“Ah, how glad I am to be rid of it! I was suffocating,” said a soft voice at Robert Kater’s side.
He looked down quickly into a pair of clear, red-brown eyes––eyes into which he had never looked before.
“Then we are both content that it is off.” He smiled as he spoke. She glanced up at him, then down and away. When she lifted her eyes an instant later again to his face, he was no longer regarding her. She was piqued, and quickly began conversing with the man on her left, the one who had removed her mask.