"No; it's merely a wanton waste of powder and shot," said he. "However, I shouldn't stick at that. The deuce of it is--You permit the expression?"
"The deuce of it is, you profess to be married."
"Do you mean to say that you, with your unprincipled foreign notions, would be restrained by any such consideration as that?" she wondered.
"I shouldn't be for an instant--if I weren't in love with you."
"_Comment donc? Déjà?_" she cried with a laugh.
"Oh, _déjà_! Why not? Consider the weather--consider the scene. Is the air soft, is it fragrant? Look at the sky--good heavens!--and the clouds, and the shadows on the grass, and the sunshine between the trees. The world is made of light to-day, of light and color, and perfume and music. _Tutt 'intorno canta amor, amor, amor!_ What would you have? One recognises one's affinity. One doesn't need a lifetime. You began the business at the Wohenhoffens' ball. To-day you've merely put on the finishing touches."
"Oh, then I _am_ the woman you met at the masked ball?" she cried.
"Look me in the eye, and tell me you're not," he defied her.
"I haven't the faintest interest in telling you I'm not. On the contrary, it rather pleases me to let you imagine that I am."
"She owed me a grudge, you know. I hoodwinked her like everything," he confided.
"Oh, did you? Then, as a sister woman, I should be glad to serve as her instrument of vengeance. Do you happen to have such a thing as a watch about you?" she inquired.
"Will you be good enough to tell me what o'clock it is?"
"Never, never, never," she asseverated. "A man who's forgotten me as you have!"
"But if I've only met you once at a masked ball--"
"Can't you be brought to realise that every time you mistake me for that woman of the masked ball you turn the dagger in the wound?" she demanded.
"But if you won't invite me to call upon you, how and when am I to see you again?"
"I haven't an idea," she answered, cheerfully. "I must go now. Good-by." She rose.
"One moment," he interposed. "Before you go will you allow me to look at the palm of your left hand?"
"I can tell fortunes. I'm extremely good at it," he boasted. "I'll tell you yours."
"Oh, very well," she assented, sitting down again: and guilelessly she pulled off her glove.