His face, still suffused with a purplish flush, pouched and baggy about the eyes, told of the maelstrom of unhealthy excitement the dance of the jaguars in the jungle had set whirling in his brain. She guessed that he had taken advantage of their separation to descend into the ball-room, and that as one of the spectators in the front rank he had revelled in the final thrill. He persisted: "_Was_? But what means it? I have lost you.... I think you must have gone down into the ball-room after your friend.... I follow and you are not there. I come back to find you.... Who was that dirty bounder I saw you talking to?" "He wasn’t a dirty bounder!" His rudeness enraged her. "He was a nice, clean, first-class, top-hole, plucky English boy!" He sneered: "’_Boy_’ ... Men of forty are boys, in the mouths of you English ladies. You borrow the term from women of the street-walking class." "Then I’ll call him a man. The best kind of man going! English—from the top of his nice head to the very tips of his toes." "How can you tell if he was not a friend of yours? What do you know of him?" He fixed his eyes compellingly on hers. She answered: "Nothing but that he flew the Channel yesterday—with Davis—to test his invention—and he has got to be on the wing for home at four." "So! He has told you all this, and you do not know his name, even? Perhaps it is on that card you hold in your hand?" She started, and the card fluttered from her twitching fingers to the carpet. "Allow me...." Von Herrnung stooped as though to retrieve the bit of pasteboard. "Curious! It has gone! ... It is not there!" he said. "I think you have your foot on it." Her eyeballs ached, she felt weary, and flat, and stale. "Please lift up your foot and let me see if it is there," she urged, and grown suddenly obtuse, he lifted up the wrong foot. She was trying to explain that he had done so when they were rejoined by Courtley and Lady Beauvayse. "Say, did you see she wore a head-band with a rubber mouth-hold at the back of her neck? And waist-fixings under her frillies so’s Herculano could swing her around his head. My land! that man has jaw-power to whip Teddy Roosevelt, and she’s got vim enough for a nest of rattlesnakes.... Used up, Pat? ... If you aren’t, you look it!" The speaker yawned prettily: "I’m about ready to be taken back to by-by, though it’s only two o’clock." Von Herrnung escorted the wearer of the green bird of paradise as they went through dark alleys and illuminated avenues back to the archway with the blazing crowns and stars. Courtley accepted the offer of a lift back to the hotel. The German declined, saying that he preferred to walk, as the car was closed.