"Then who are you?" She added, laughing: "They're shapely enough, too."
"I am only a poor wandering, love-smitten Harlequin—" he said, "scorned, despised, and mocked by beauty——"
"Love-smitten?" she repeated.
"Can you doubt it, now?"
She laughed gaily and leaned back against the balcony's velvet rail:
"You lose no time in declaring yourself, do you, Harlequin?—that is, if you are hinting that I have smitten you with the pretty passion."
"Through and through, beautiful dancer——"
"How do you know that I am beautiful under this mask?"
"I know many things. That's my compensation for being only a poor mountebank of a Harlequin—magic penetration—the clairvoyance of radium."
"Did you expect to find me at the top of those cork-screw stairs?"