"You make a good guesser, Mr. Barnes. Madame Damien it was, though, truth to tell, I was so much interested in the silent, watchful girl beside me that I paid little attention to the others. The quadrille had just ended and I was wondering how best to make my little sphinx talk, when a strange thing happened. The couple opposite to us crossed toward us, and as they approached my partner swayed as though about to fall, and then suddenly toppled over against me, and in a whisper she said:
"'I am dizzy. Take me out in the air.'
"Just then, 'Helen of Troy,' hanging on the arm of her 'Romeo,' passed so close to us that the women's costumes touched. She looked scrutinizingly at the girl with me, and I heard her say to her companion,—
"'That girl is a sphinx.'
"Then they passed on. Her words startled me, for I had just used the epithet in my own mind in connection with my partner. I thought of her as a sphinx because of her silence. But now that some one else called her a sphinx, I observed that she wore a curious head-dress which reminded one of the great monument of the Eastern desert. Perhaps, then, she was but playing the part which she had assumed with her costume. At all events there seemed to be a mystery worthy of the effort at penetration. So I hurried out into the air with my little sphinx, and soon we were walking up one of the snow-white walks. I tried to induce her to talk, but though she seemed willing to remain in my companionship, she trembled a good deal but kept as mum as the stone image to which I now likened her. I was wondering by what device I might make her talk, when she utterly startled me by crying out:
"'I wish I dared to tell you everything. Perhaps you might help me.'
"'Tell me what you will, little one,' said I, 'and I will help you if I can, and keep your secret besides.'
"'Oh, there is no secret,' she exclaimed; 'I am not so wicked as that. But we cannot talk here. Come, I know a place.'
"I followed her as she hurried me on, more mystified than before. She tells me 'there is no secret,' and that she is 'not as wicked as that.' Why need she be wicked, to have a secret? I could not fathom it, but as I was to know all, even though it were no secret, I was able to await the telling. Oddly enough, as it seemed to me then, she led me to the very lovers' nook in which I had found Madame Damien when I purchased the ruby. Before entering, my little sphinx took the precaution to extinguish the lanterns at the doorway, so that when we passed inside we were in gloom as impenetrable as that of one of the passageways in the pyramids. She seemed familiar with the place, for she took my hand and led me away to one side, where there was a rustic bench. Here we sat down, and after a few minutes she began.
"'You do not know me, of course,' said she.