It was. Marion, coming into the ballroom about eleven o’clock was met by a wave of heat, comforting and sustaining. She moved about among the throng, slightly dazed, it is true, but self-confident and elated. As she expected, she could not put a name to many of the people who kept crossing her restricted line of vision, but she was intensely aware of their eyes—dark, watchful but otherwise expressionless eyes, framed in black. She welcomed their direct regard. On all sides she heard conversation and laughter, especially laughter; little trills and screams of delight at identities disclosed; voices expressing bewilderment and polite despair—‘I’m very stupid, I really cannot imagine who you are,’ gruff rumbling voices, and high falsetto squeaks, obviously disguised. Marion found herself a little impatient of this childishness. When people recognized her, as they often did (her mask was as much a decoration as a concealment) she smiled with her lips but did not try to identify them in return. She felt faintly scornful of the women who were only interesting provided you did not know who they were. She looked forward to the moment when the real business of the evening would begin.

But now the band in the alcove between the two doors had struck up, and a touch on her arm warned her that she was wanted for a figure. Her partner was a raw youth, nice enough in his way, eager, good-natured and jaunty, like a terrier dog. He was not a type she cared for, and she longed to give him the slip.

The opportunity came. Standing on a chair, rather like the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour, she held aloft a lighted candle. Below her seethed a small group of masked males, leaping like salmon, for the first to blow the candle out would have the privilege of dancing with the torch-bearer. Among them was her partner; he jumped higher than the rest, as she feared he would; but each time she saw his Triton-like mouth soaring up she forestalled his agility and moved the candle out of his reach. Her arm began to tire; and the pack, foiled so often, began to relax their efforts. She must do something quickly. Espying her host among the competitors, she shamelessly brought the candle down to the level of his mouth.

‘Nice of you,’ he said, when, having danced a few turns, they were sitting side by side. ‘I was glad of that bit of exercise.’

‘Why, do you feel cold?’

‘A little. Don’t you?’

Marion considered. ‘Perhaps I do.’

‘Funny thing,’ said her host, ‘fires seem to be blazing away all right, and it was too hot ten minutes ago.’

Their eyes travelled inquiringly round the room. ‘Why,’ exclaimed Manning, ‘no wonder we’re cold; there’s a window open.’

As he spoke, a gust of wind blew the heavy curtains inwards, and a drift of snow came after them.

‘Excuse me a moment,’ he said. I’ll soon stop that.’

She heard the sash slam, and in a few moments he was back at her side.

‘Now who on earth can have done it?’ he demanded, still gasping from contact with the cold air. ‘The window was wide open!’

‘Wide enough to let anyone in?’

‘Quite.’

‘How many of us ought there to be?’ asked Marion. ‘I’m sure you don’t know.’

‘I do—there are——’

‘Don’t tell me, let’s count. I’ll race you.’

They were both so absorbed in their calculations that the leaders of the cotillon, coming round armed with favours for the next figure, dropped into their laps a fan and a pocket book and passed on unnoticed.

‘Well, what do you make it?’ they cried almost in unison.

‘Seventy-nine,’ said Marion. ‘And you?’

‘Seventy-nine, too.’

‘And how many ought there to be?’

‘Seventy-eight.’

‘That’s a rum go,’ said Manning. ‘We can’t both be mistaken. I suppose someone came in afterwards. When I get a chance I’ll talk to Jackson.’

‘It can’t be a burglar,’ said Marion, ‘a burglar wouldn’t have chosen that way of getting in.’

‘Besides, we should have seen him. No, a hundred to one it was just somebody who was feeling the heat and needed air. I don’t blame them, but they needn’t have blown us away. Anyhow, if there is a stranger among us he’ll soon have to show up, for in half an hour’s time we can take off these confounded masks. I wouldn’t say it of everyone, but I like you better without yours.’

‘Do you?’ smiled Marion.

‘Meanwhile, we must do something about these favours. The next figure’s beginning. I say, a fur rug would be more suitable, but may I give this fan to you?’

‘And will you accept this useful pocket book?’

They smiled and began to dance.

Ten minutes passed; the fires were heaped up, but the rubbing of hands and hunching of shoulders which had followed the inrush of cold air did not cease. Marion, awaiting her turn to hold the looking-glass, shivered slightly. She watched her predecessor on the chair. Armed with a handkerchief, she was gazing intently into the mirror while each in his turn the men stole up behind her, filling the glass with their successive reflections; one after another she rubbed the images out. Marion was wondering idly whether she would wait too long and find the candidates exhausted when she jumped up from her chair, handed the looking-glass to the leader of the cotillon, and danced away with the man of her choice. Marion took the mirror and sat down. A feeling of unreality oppressed her. How was she to choose between these grotesque faces? One after another they loomed up, dream-like, in the glass, their intense, almost hypnotic eyes searching hers. She could not tell whether they were smiling, they gave so little indication of expression. She remembered how the other women had paused, peered into the glass, and seemed to consider; rubbing away this one at sight, with affected horror, lingering over that one as though sorely tempted, only erasing him after a show of reluctance. She had fancied that some of the men looked piqued when they were rejected; they walked off with a toss of the head; others had seemed frankly pleased to be chosen. She was not indifferent to the mimic drama of the figure, but she couldn’t contribute to it. The chill she still felt numbed her mind, and made it drowsy; her gestures seemed automatic, outside the control of her will. Mechanically she rubbed away the reflection of the first candidate, of the second, of the third. But when the fourth presented himself, and hung over her chair till his mask was within a few inches of her hair, the onlookers saw her pause; the hand with the handkerchief lay motionless in her lap, her eyes were fixed upon the mirror. So she sat for a full minute, while the man at the back, never shifting his position, drooped over her like an earring.

‘She’s taking a good look this time,’ said a bystander at last, and the remark seemed to pierce her reverie—she turned round slowly and then gave a tremendous start; she was on her feet in a moment. ‘I’m so sorry,’ someone heard her say as she gave the man her hand, ‘I never saw you. I had no idea that anyone was there.’

A few minutes later Jane Manning, who had taken as much share in the proceedings as a hostess can, felt a touch upon her arm. It was Marion.

‘Well, my dear,’ she said. ‘Are you enjoying yourself?’

Marion’s voice shook a little. ‘Marvellously!’ She added in an amused tone:

‘Queer fellow I got hold of just now.’

‘Queer-looking, do you mean?’

‘Really I don’t know; he was wearing a sort of death-mask that covered him almost completely, and he was made up as well, I thought, with French chalk.’

‘What else was queer about him?’

‘He didn’t talk. I couldn’t get a word out of him.’

‘Perhaps he was deaf.’

‘That occurred to me. But he heard the music all right; he danced beautifully.’

‘Show him to me.’

Marion’s eyes hovered round the room without catching sight of her late partner.

‘He doesn’t seem to be here.’

‘Perhaps he’s our uninvited guest,’ said Jane, laughing. ‘Jack told me there was an extra person who couldn’t be accounted for. Now, darling, you mustn’t miss this figure: it’s the most amusing of them all. After that, there are some favours to be given, and then supper. I long for it.’