It lacked little of the eleventh hour when the football player reached the ballroom—last comer to the revels. A bandage round his head and a rubber noseguard, which also hid his mouth, served for a mask, eked out by crisscrossed strips of courtplaster. One arm was in a sling—for stage purposes only.

As he limped through the door, Diogenes hurried to meet him, held up his lantern, peered hopefully into the battered face and shook his disappointed head. “Stung again!” muttered Diogenes.

Jeff lisped in numbers which fully verified the cynic’s misgiving. “7—11—4—11—44!” he announced jerkily. This was strictly in character and also excused him from entangling talk, leaving him free to search the whirl of dancers.

A bulky Rough Rider volunteered his help. He fixed a gleaming eyeglass on his nose and politely offered Jeff a Big Stick by way of a crutch. “Hit the line hard!” he barked. He bit the words off with a prize-bulldog effect. He had fine teeth.

Jeff waved him off. “16—2—1!” he proclaimed controversially. He felt his spirits sinking, with a growing doubt of his ability to identify the Only One, and was impatient of interruption. He kept his slow and watchful way down the floor.

Topsy broke away from her partner and stopped Jeff’s crippled progress. Her short hair, braided to a dozen tight and tiny pigtails, bristled away in all directions.

“Laws, young marsta’, you suhtenly does look puny!” she said. Then she clutched at her knee. “Aie!” she tittered, as a loose red stocking dropped flappingly to her ankle. Pray do not be shocked. The effect was startling; but a black stocking, decorously tight and smooth, was beneath the red one. Jeff’s mathematics were not equal to the strain of adequate comment. Topsy dived to the rescue. “Got a string?” she giggled, as she hitched the fallen stocking back to place. “I cain’t fix this good nohow!”

Jeff jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Man over there with an eyeglass cord—maybe you can get that. What makes you act so?” He looked cold disapproval; nevertheless, he looked.

Topsy hung her head, still clutching at the stocking-top. “Dunno. I spec’s it’s ’cause Ise so wicked!” Finger in mouth, she looked after Jeff as he hobbled away.

A slender witch bounced from a chair and barred his way with a broom. Her eyes were brimming sorcery; her lips looked saucy challenge; she leaned close for a whispered word in his ear: “How would you like to tackle me?”

Poor Jeff! “10, 2—10, 2!” he promised huskily. Yet he ducked beneath the broom.

“But,” said the little witch plaintively, “you’re going away!” She dropped her broom and wept.

“8, 2—8, 2—8, 2!” said Jeff, almost in tears himself, and again fell back upon English. “Mere figures or mere words can’t tell you how much I hate to; but I’ve got to follow the ball. I’m looking for a fellow.”

“If he—if he doesn’t love you,” sobbed the stricken witch, “then you’ll come back to me—won’t you? I love a liar!”

“To the very stake!” vowed Jeff. Such heroic, if conditional, constancy was not to go unrewarded. A couple detached themselves from the dancers, threaded their way to a corner of the long hall and stood there in deep converse. Jeff quickened pulse and pace—for one was a Red Devil and the other wore the soft gray costume of a Friend. She was tall, this Quakeress, and the hobnobbing devil was of Jeff’s own height. Jeff began to hope for a goal.

Briskly limping, he came to this engrossed couple and laid a friendly hand on the devil’s shoulder.

“Brother,” he said cordially, “will you please go to—home?”

The devil recoiled an astonished step.

“What? What!! Show me your license!”

“Twenty-three!—Please!—there’s a good devil—23! I’m the right guard for this lady, I hope. Oh, please to go home!”

The devil took this request in very bad part.

“Go back fifteen yards for offside play and take a drop kick at yourself!” he suggested sourly.

A burly policeman, plainly conscious of fitting his uniform, paused for warning.

“No scrappin’ now! Don’t start nothin’ or I’ll run in the t’ree av yees!” he said, and sauntered on, twirling a graceful nightstick.

“Thee is a local man, judging from thy letters,” said the Quaker lady, to relieve the somewhat strained situation. “What do they stand for? E. P.? Oh, yes—El Paso, of course!”

“I saw you first!” said the Red Devil. “And with your disposition you would naturally find me more suitable. Make your choice of gridirons! Send him back to the side lines! Disqualify him for interference!”

“Don’t be hurried into a decision,” said Jeff. “Eternity is a good while. Before it’s over I’m going to be a—well, something more than a footballer. Golf, maybe—or tiddledywinks.”

The Quakeress glanced attentively from one to the other.

“Doubtless he will do his best to forward Thy Majesty’s interests,” she interposed. “Why not give him a chance?”

The devil shrugged his shoulders. “I always prefer to give this branch of work my personal attention,” he said stiffly.

“A specialty of thine?” mocked the girl.

The devil bowed sulkily.

“My heart is in it. Of course, if you prefer the bungling of a novice, there is no more to be said.”

“Thy Majesty’s manners have never been questioned,” murmured the Quakeress, bowing dismissal. “So kind of you!”

The devil bowed deeply and turned, pausing to hurl a gloomy prophecy over his shoulder. “See you later!” he said, and stalked away with an ill grace.

Pigskin hero and girl Friend, left alone, eyed each other with mutual apprehension. The girl Friend was first to recover speech. Her red lips were prim below her vizor, her eyes downcast to hide their dancing lights. Timidly she spread out fanwise the dove color of her sober costume.

“How does thee like my gray gown?”

“Not at all,” said Jeff brutally. “You’re no friend of mine, I hope.”

A most un-Quakerlike dimple trembled to her chin, relieving the firm austerity of straight lips. Also, Jeff caught a glimpse of her eyes through the vizor. They were crinkling—and they were brown. She ventured another tentative remark, and there was in it an undertone lingering, softly confidential.

“Is thee lame?”

“Not—very,” said Jeff, and saw a faint color start to the unmasked moiety of the Quaker cheek. “Still, if I may have the next dance, I shall be glad if you will sit it out with me.” Painfully he raised the beslinged arm in explanation. Sobre las Olas throbbed out its wistful call; they set their thought to its haunting measure.

“By all means!” She took his undamaged arm. “Let us find chairs.”

Now there were chairs to the left of them, chairs to the right of them, chairs vacant everywhere; but the gallant Six Hundred themselves were not more heedless or undismayed than these two. Still, all the world did not wonder. On the contrary, not even the anxious devil saw them after they passed behind a knot of would-be dancers who were striving to disentangle themselves. For, seeing traffic thus blocked, the policeman rushed to unsnarl the tangle. Magnificently he flourished his stick. He adjured them roughly: “Move on, yous! Move on!” Whereat, with one impulse, the tangle moved on the copper, swept over him, engulfed him, hustled him to the door and threw him out.

So screened, the chair-hunters vanished in far less than a psychological moment: for Jeff, in obedience to a faint or fancied pressure on his arm, dived through portiÈres into a small room set apart for such as had the heart to prefer cards or chess. The room was deserted now and there was a broad window open to the night. Thus, thrice favored of Providence, they found themselves in the garden, chairless but cheerful.

A garden with one Eve is the perfect combination in a world awry. Muffled, the music and the sounds of the ballroom came faint and far to them; star-made shadows danced at their feet. The girl paused, expectant; but it was the unexpected that happened. The nimble tongue which had done such faithful service for Mr. Bransford now failed him quite: left him struggling, dumb, inarticulate, helpless—tongue and hand alike forgetful of their cunning.

Be sure the maid had adroitly heard much of Mr. Bransford, his deeds and misdeeds, during the tedious interval since their first meeting. Report had dwelt lovingly upon Mr. Bransford’s eloquence at need. This awkward silence was a tribute of sincerity above question.

With difficulty Ellinor mastered a wild desire to ask where the cat had gone. “Oh, come ye in peace here or come ye in war?” Such injudicious quotation trembled on the tip of her tongue, but she suppressed it—barely in time. She felt herself growing nervous with the fear lest she should be hurried into some all too luminous speech. And still Jeff stood there, lost, speechless, helpless, unready, a clumsy oaf, an object of pity. Pity at last, or a kindred feeling, drove her to the rescue. And, just as she had feared, she said, in her generous haste, far too much.

“I thought you were not coming?”

The inflection made a question of this statement. Also, by implication, it answered so many questions yet unworded that Jeff was able to use his tongue again; but it was not the trusty tongue of yore—witness this wooden speech:

“You mean you thought I said I wasn’t coming—don’t you? You knew I would come.”

“Indeed? How should I know what you would do? I’ve only seen you once. Aren’t you forgetting that?”

“Why else did you make up as a Friend then?”

“Oh! Oh, dear, these men! There’s conceit for you! I chose my costume solely to trap Mr. Bransford’s eye? Is that it? Doubtless all my thoughts have centered on Mr. Bransford since I first saw him!”

“You know I didn’t mean that, Miss Ellinor. I——”

“Miss Hoffman, if you please!”

“Miss Hoffman. Don’t be mean to me. I’ve only got an hour——”

“An hour! Do you imagine for one second——Why, I mustn’t stay here. This is really a farewell dance given in my honor. We go back East day after to-morrow. I must go in.”

“Only one little hour. And I have come a long ways for my hour. They take their masks off at midnight—don’t they? And of course I can’t stay after that. I want only just to ask you——”

“Why did you come then? Isn’t it rather unusual to go uninvited to a ball?”

“Why, I reckon you nearly know why I come, Miss Hoffman; but if you want me to say precisely, ma’am——”

“I don’t!”

“We’ll keep that for a surprise, then. Another thing: I wanted to find out just where you live in New York. I forgot to ask you. And I couldn’t very well go round asking folks after you’re gone—could I? Of course I didn’t have any invitation—from Mr. Lake; but I thought, if he didn’t know it, he wouldn’t mind me just stepping in to get your address.”

“Well, of all the assurance!” said Miss Ellinor. “Do you intend to start up a correspondence with me without even the formality of asking my consent?”

“Why, Miss Ellinor, ma’am, I thought——”

“Miss Hoffman, sir! Yes—and there’s another thing. You said you had no invitation—from Mr. Lake. Does that mean, by any chance, that I invited you?”

“You didn’t say a word about my coming,” said Jeff. He was a flustered man, this poor Bransford, but he managed to put a slight stress upon the word “say.”

Miss Ellinor—Miss Hoffman—caught this faint emphasis instantly.

“Oh, I didn’t say anything? I just looked an invitation, I suppose?” she stormed. “Melting eyes—and that sort of thing? Tears in them, maybe? Poor girl! Poor little child! It would be cruel to let her go home without seeing me again. I will give her a little more happiness, poor thing, and write to her a while. Maybe it would be wiser, though, just to make a quarrel and break loose at once. She’ll get over it in a little while after she gets back to New York. Well! Upon my word!”

As she advanced these horrible suppositions, Miss Hoffman had marked out a short beat of garden path—five steps and a turn; five steps back and whirl again—with, on the whole, a caged-tigress effect. With a double-quick at each turn to keep his place at her elbow, Jeff, utterly aghast at the damnable perversity of everything on earth, vainly endeavored to make coÖrdinate and stumbling remonstrance. As she stopped for breath, Jeff heard his own voice at last, propounding to the world at large a stunned query as to whether the abode of lost spirits could afford aught to excel the present situation. The remark struck him: he paused to wonder what other things he had been saying.

Miss Ellinor walked her beat, vindictive. Her chin was at an angle of complacency. She turned up the perky corners of an imaginary mustache with an air, an exasperating little finger, separated from the others, pointing upward in hateful self-satisfaction. Her mouth wore a gratified masculine smirk, visible even in the starlight; her gait was a leisured and lordly strut; her hand waved airy pity. Jeff shrank back in horror.

“M-Miss Hoffman, I n-never d-dreamed——”

Miss Hoffman turned upon him swiftly.

“Never have I heard anything like it—never! You bring me out here willy-nilly, and by way of entertainment you virtually accuse me of throwing myself at your head.”

“I never!” said Jeff indignantly. “I didn’t——”

Miss Hoffman faced him crouchingly and shook an indictment from her fingers.

“First, you imply that I enticed you to come; second, expecting you, I dressed to catch your eye; third, I was watching eagerly for you——”

“Come—I say now!” The baited and exasperated victim walked headlong into the trap. “The first thing you did was to ask me if I was lame? Wasn’t that question meant to find out who I was? When I answered, ‘Not—very,’ didn’t you know at once that it was me?”

“There! That proves exactly what I was just saying,” raged the delighted trapper. “You don’t even deny it! You say in so many words that I have been courting you! I had to say something—didn’t I? You wouldn’t! You were limping, so I asked you if you were lame. What else could I have said? Did you want me to stand there like a stuffed Egyptian mummy? That’s the thanks a girl gets for trying to help a great, awkward, blundering butter-fingers! Oh, if you could just see yourself! The irresistible conqueror! Not altogether unprincipled though! You are capable of compunction. I’ll give you credit for that. Alarmed at your easy success, you try to spare me. It is noble of you—noble! You drag me out here, force a quarrel upon me——”

“Oh, by Jove now! Really!” Stung by the poignant injustice of crowding events, Jeff took the bit in his teeth and rushed to destruction. “Really, you must see yourself that I couldn’t drag you out here! I have never been in that hall before. I didn’t know the lay of the ground. I didn’t even know that little side room was there. I thought you pressed my arm a little——” So the brainless colt, in the quicksands, flounders deeper with each effort to extricate himself.

If Miss Hoffman had been angry before she was furious now.

“So that’s the way of it? Better and better! I dragged you out! Really, Mr. Bransford, I feel that I should take you back to your chaperon at once. You might be compromised, you know!”

Goaded to desperation, he acted on this hint at once. He turned, with stiff and stilted speech:

“I will take you back to the window, Miss Hoffman. Then there is nothing for me to do but go. I am sorry to have caused you even a moment’s annoyance. To-morrow you will see how you have twisted—I mean, how completely you have misinterpreted everything I have said. Perhaps some day you may forgive me. Here is the window. Good-night—good-by!”

Miss Hoffman lingered, however.

“Of course, if you apologize——”

“I do, Miss Hoffman. I beg your pardon most sincerely for anything I have ever said or done that could hurt you in any way.”

“If you are sure you are sorry—if you take it all back and will never do such a thing again—perhaps I may forgive you.”

“I won’t—I am—I will!” said the abject and groveling wretch. Which was incoherent but pleasing. “I didn’t mean anything the way you took it; but I’m sorry for everything.”

“Then I didn’t beguile you to come? Or mask as a Friend in the hope that you would identify me?”

“No, no!”

Miss Ellinor pressed her advantage cruelly. “Nor take stock of each new masker to see if he possibly wasn’t the expected Mr. Bransford? Nor drag you into the garden? Nor squeeze your arm?” Her hands went to her face, her lissome body shook. “Oh, Mr. Bransford!” she sobbed between her fingers. “How could you—how could you say that?”

The clock chimed. A pealing voice beat out into the night: “Masks off!” A hundred voices swelled the cry; it was drowned in waves of laughter. It rose again tumultuously: “Masks off! Masks off!” Nearer came hateful voices, too, that cried: “Ellinor! Ellinor! Where are you?”

“I must go!” said Jeff. “They’ll be looking for you. No; you didn’t do any of those things. You couldn’t do any of those things. Good-by!”

“Ellinor! Ellinor Hoffman!! Where are you?”

Miss Hoffman whipped off her mask. From the open window a shaft of light fell on her face. It was flushed, sparkling, radiant. “Masks off!” she said. “Stupid!... Oh, you great goose! Of course I did!” She stepped back into the shadow.

No one, as the copybook says justly, may be always wise. Conversely, the most unwise of us blunders sometimes upon the right thing to do. With a glimmer of returning intelligence Mr. Bransford laid his noseguard on the window-sill.

“Sir!” said Ellinor then. “How dare you?” Then she turned the other cheek. “Good-by!” she whispered, and fled away to the ballroom.

Mr. Bransford, in the shadows, scratched his head dubiously.

“Her Christian name was Ellinor,” he muttered. “Ellinor! H’m—Ellinor! Very appropriate name.... Very!... And I don’t know yet where she lives!”

He wandered disconsolately away to the garden wall, forgetting the discarded noseguard.

CHAPTER VI