"Voila!" she said, breathlessly, "I've paid my bet! Am I not a good sport, Harlequin? Own that I am and I will forgive your outrageous impudence!"
"You are a most excellent sport, madame!" he conceded, grinning.
Relief from the tension cooled her cheeks; she laughed bewitchingly and looked at him, exultant, unafraid.
"I frightened you well with my desperate counting, didn't I? You completely forgot to do—anything, didn't you? Voyons! Admit it!"
"You completely terrorized me," he admitted.
"Besides," she said, "while I was so busily counting the seconds aloud you couldn't very well have kissed me, could you? That was strategy. You couldn't have managed it, could you?"
"Not very easily."
"I really did nonplus you, didn't I?" she insisted, aware of his amusement.
"Oh, entirely," he said. "I became an abject idiot."
She stood breathing more evenly now, the pretty colour coming and going in her cheeks. Considering him, looking alternately at his masked eyes and at his expressive lips where a kind of silent and infernal mirth still flickered, a sudden doubt assailed her. And presently, with a dainty shrug, she turned and glanced down through the gilt lattice toward the floor below.