The tall domino considered this in silence. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said, “I never played this game before.”
“It is the most wonderful game in the world!” said Sylvia, fervently.
“Perhaps,” was the reply. “To me it seems a very foolish game, and I think it was poor taste on Mrs. Winthrop’s part.”
“Dear me!” thought the girl, “what kind of a fish have I caught here?” There was something strangely familiar about the voice, but she could not place it. She had met so many men in the last week or two.
“Sir,” she said, “I fear me that you lack a little of that holiday glee which is necessary to such occasion as this. I would that I could sing a song to cheer your moping spirit—”
‘Nymphs and shepherds come away, For this is Flora’s holiday!’
Then, leaning a little nearer yet, “Come, sir, you must make an effort.”
“You must manage to throw yourself into a state of rapture. You must tell me that you adore me. You must say that my blue eyes make dim the vault of heaven——”
“You should not expect to see them. Have you not been told that Love is blind?”
So she tried to drive this tall domino to play; but it was sorry frisking that he did. “You must fall down upon your knees before me,” she said; but he protested that he could really not do that. And when she insisted, “You must!” he got down, with such deliberation that the girl was half convulsed with laughter.
“Sir,” she chided, “that will not do. When you stop to ease each trouser-knee, how can I believe that you are overcome with the ardor of your feelings? You must get up and try again.” And actually she made him get up and plump down suddenly upon his knees; and was so mischievous and so merry about it that she got even him to laughing in the end.
She was sure by this time that she had met the man before, and she found herself running over the list of her acquaintances, trying to imagine which one could be capable of making love in such a fashion. But she could not think of one. She fell to studying the domino and the mask before her, wondering what feelings could be behind them. Was it timidity and lack of imagination? Or could it be that the man was sulky and uncivil as he seemed? When the bell rang and she rose, she breathed to herself the prayer that she might be spared running into another “stick” like that.