The Streets of Ascalon. Chambers Robert William
sprang from the balustrade, landing lightly, his left hand spread over his heart, his bi-corne flourished in the other.
"You are Strelsa Leeds!" he said in a low voice.
The golden dancer straightened up to her full height, astounded, and a bright flood of colour stained her cheeks under the mask's curved edge.
"It – it is impossible that you should know – " she began, exasperated. "How could you? Only one person knew what I was to wear to-night! I came by myself with my maid. It – it is magic! It is infernal – abominable magic – "
She checked herself, still standing very straight, the gorgeous, blossom-woven cloth-of-gold rippling; the jewels shooting light from the fillet that bound her hair.
After a silence:
"How did you know?" she asked, striving to smile through the flushed chagrin. "It is perfectly horrid of you – anyhow – "
Curiosity checked her again; she stood gazing at him in silence, striving to pierce the eye-slits of that black skin-mask – trying to interpret the expression of the mischievous mobile mouth below it – or, perhaps the malice was all in those slanting slits behind which two strange eyes sparkled steadily out at her from the shadow.
"Strelsa Leeds," he repeated, and flourished one hand in graceful emphasis as she coloured hotly again. And he saw the teeth catch at her under lip.
"It is outrageous," she declared. "Tell me instantly who you are!"
"First," he insisted, mischievously, "I claim the forfeit."
"The – the forfeit!" she faltered.
"Did you not lose your wager?"
She nodded reluctantly, searching the disguised features before her in vain for a clew to his identity. Then, a trifle uneasily:
"Yes, of course I lost my wager. But – I did not clearly understand what you meant by an hour out of my life."
"It is to be an hour at my disposal," he explained with another grotesque bow. "I think that was the wager?"
"Y-yes."
"Unless," he remarked carelessly, "you desire the – ah – privilege and indisputable prerogative of your delightful sex."
"The privilege of my sex? What is that?" she asked, dangerously polite.
"Why, to change your divine mind – repudiate the obligation – "
"Harlequin!"
"Madame?" with an elaborate and wriggling bow.
"I pay what I owe – always… Always! Do you understand?"
The Harlequin bowed again in arabesques, very low, yet with a singular and almost devilish grace:
"Madame concedes that the poor Harlequin has won his wager?"
"Yes, I do – and you don't appear to be particularly humble, either."
"Madame insists on paying?" he inquired suavely.
"Yes, of course I do!" she said, uneasily. "I promised you an hour out of my life. Am I to pay it now?"
"You pay by the minute – one minute a day for sixty days. I am going to take the first minute now. Perhaps I may ask for the other fifty-nine, also."
"How?"
"Shall I show you how?"
"Very well."
"A magic pass or two, first," he said gaily, crooking one spangled knee and spinning around. Then he whipped out his lathe-sword, held it above his head, coolly passed a glittering arm around her waist, and looked down into her flushed face.
"You will have to count out the sixty seconds," he said. "I shall be otherwise occupied, and I can't trust myself to do two things at once."
"What are you about to do? Sink through a trap-door with me?"
"I am about to salute you with the magic kiss. After that you'll be my Columbine forever."
"That is not included in the bet! Is it?" she asked in real consternation.
"I may do as I please with my hour, may I not?"
"Was it the bet that you were to be at liberty to – to kiss me?"
"I control absolutely an hour out of your life, do I not? I may use it as I please. You had better count out sixty seconds."
She looked down, biting her lip, and touched one hand against her cheeks, alternately, as though to cool them with the snowy contact.
He waited in silence for her reply.
"Very well," she said resolutely, "if you elect to use the first minute of your hour as frivolously as that, I must submit, I suppose."
And she began to count aloud, rapidly: "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, ni – "
Her face was averted; he could see the tip of one small ear all aflame. Presently she ventured a swift glance around at him and saw that he was laughing.
"Ten, eleven, twelve," she counted nervously, still watching him; "thirteen, fourteen, fifteen – " panic threatened her; she doubled both hands in the effort of self-control and timed her counting as though the rapid beating of the tempo could hasten her immunity – "sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, one, two, three – "
"Play fair!" he exclaimed.
"I am trying to. Can't I say it that way up to ten, and then say thirty?"
"Oh, certainly. I've still half a minute. You'd better hurry! I may begin at any moment."
"Four – five – six – seven – m-m-m – thirty!" she cried, and the swift numbers fled from her lips fairly stumbling over one another, tumbling the sequence of hurrying numerals into one breathless gasp of: "Forty!"
His arm slid away from her waist; he stepped backward, and stood, watching her, one finger crooked, supporting his chin, the ironical smile hovering ever on his lips.
"Fifty!" she counted excitedly, her hands beating time to the counting; " – fifty-one – two – three – four – m-m-m – sixty!" – and she whirled around to face him with an impulsively triumphant gesture which terminated in a swift curtsey, arms flung wide apart.
"Voila!" she said, breathlessly, "I've paid my bet! Am I not a good sport, Harlequin? Own that I am and I will forgive your outrageous impudence!"
"You are a most excellent sport, madame!" he conceded, grinning.
Relief from the tension cooled her cheeks; she laughed bewitchingly and looked at him, exultant, unafraid.
"I frightened you well with my desperate counting, didn't I? You completely forgot to do – anything, didn't you? Voyons! Admit it!"
"You completely terrorized me," he admitted.
"Besides," she said, "while I was so busily counting the seconds aloud you couldn't very well have kissed me, could you? That was strategy. You couldn't have managed it, could you?"
"Not very easily."
"I really did nonplus you, didn't I?" she insisted, aware of his amusement.
"Oh, entirely," he said. "I became an abject idiot."
She stood breathing more evenly now, the pretty colour coming and going in her cheeks. Considering him, looking alternately at his masked eyes and at his expressive lips where a kind of silent and infernal mirth still flickered, a sudden doubt assailed her. And presently, with a dainty shrug, she turned and glanced down through the gilt lattice toward the floor below.
"I suppose," she said, tauntingly, "you hope I'll believe that you refrained from kissing me out of some belated consideration for decency. But I know perfectly well that I perplexed you, and confused you and intimidated you."
"This is, of course, the true solution of my motives in not kissing you."
She turned toward him:
"What motive?"
"My motive for not kissing