“How do you do?” he responded. “I’m afraid I’m not Mr. Field; but I’ll gladly pretend I am, if you’ll stop and talk with me. I was dying for a little human conversation.” “Oh, you’re afraid you’re not Mr. Field, are you?” the mask replied derisively. “Then why did you turn when I called his name?” “You mustn’t hope to disconcert me with questions like that,” said he. “I turned because I liked your voice.” He might quite reasonably have liked her voice, a delicate, clear, soft voice, somewhat high in register, with an accent, crisp, chiselled, concise, that suggested wit as well as distinction. She was rather tall, for a woman; one could divine her slender and graceful, under the voluminous folds of her domino. She moved a little away from the door, deeper into the conservatory. The mandarin kept beside her. There, amongst the palms, a fontaine lumineuse was playing, rhythmically changing colour. Now it was a shower of rubies; now of emeralds or amethysts, of sapphires, topazes, or opals. “How pretty,” she said, “and how frightfully ingenious. I am wondering whether this wouldn’t be a good place to sit down. What do you think?” And she pointed with a fan to a rustic bench. “I think it would be no more than fair to give it a trial,” he assented. So they sat down on the rustic bench, by the fontaine lumineuse. “In view of your fear that you’re not Mr. Field, it’s rather a coincidence that at a masked ball in Vienna you should just happen to be English, isn’t it?” she asked. “Oh, everybody’s more or less English, in these days, you know,” said he. “There’s some truth in that,” she admitted, with a laugh. “What a diverting piece of artifice this Wintergarten is, to be sure. Fancy arranging the electric lights to shine through a dome of purple glass, and look like stars. They do look like stars, don’t they? Slightly over-dressed, showy stars, indeed; stars in the German taste; but stars, all the same. Then, by day, you know, the purple glass is removed, and you get the sun—the real sun. Do you notice the delicious fragrance of lilac? If one hadn’t too exacting an imagination, one might almost persuade oneself that one was in a proper open-air garden, on a night in May.... Yes, everybody is more or less English, in these days. That’s precisely the sort of thing I should have expected Victor Field to say.” “By-the-bye,” questioned the mandarin, “if you don’t mind increasing my stores of knowledge, who is this fellow Field?” “This fellow Field? Ah, who indeed?” said she. “That’s just what I wish you’d tell me.” “I’ll tell you with pleasure, after you’ve supplied me with the necessary data,” he promised cheerfully. “Well, by some accounts, he’s a little literary man in London,” she remarked. “Oh, come! You never imagined that I was a little literary man in London,” protested he. “You might be worse,” she retorted. “However, if the phrase offends you, I’ll say a rising young literary man, instead. He writes things, you know.”