"Do you think," he asked, in desperation, "that you would be afraid to be left here a moment while I went about in the crowd and tried to find them?"
"Not at all," she said. But she added, "Don't be gone long."
"Oh no," he answered, pulling off his mask. "Be sure not to move from here on any account."
He plunged into the midst of the crowd that buffeted him from side to side as he struck against its masses. The squeaking and gibbering masks mocked in their falsetto at his wild-eyed, naked face thrusting hither and thither among them.
"I saw your lady wife with another gentleman," cried one of them, in a subtle misinterpretation of the cause of his distraction.
The throng had immensely increased; the clowns and harlequins ran shrieking up and down, and leaped over one another's heads.
It was useless. He went back to Imogene with a heart-sickening fear that she too might have vanished.
But she was still there.
"You ought to have come sooner," she said gaily. "That red mask has been here again. He looked as if he wanted to make love to me this time. But he didn't. If you'd been here you might have asked him where Mrs. Bowen was."
Colville sat down. He had done what he could to mend the matter, and the time had come for philosophical submission. It was now his duty to keep up Miss Graham's spirits. They were both Americans, and from the national standpoint he was simply the young girl's middle-aged bachelor friend. There was nothing in the situation for him to beat his breast about.