A gay character for a masked ball! Indifference and pique swung Ryder towards a geisha girl, but a trace of irritation lingered and he found her, "You likee plink gleisha?" singularly witless. He'd tell McLean just how darned captivating his outfit was, he promised himself. And then he caught sight of a familiar pair of gray eyes smiling over the white veil of an odalisque. Jinny Jeffries was wearing one of the many costumes there that passed for Oriental, a glittering assemblage of Turkish trousers and Circassian veils, silver shawls and necklaces and wide bracelets banding bare arms. As an effect it was distinctly successful. "Ten thousand dinars could not pay for the chicken she has eaten," uttered Ryder appreciatively in the language of the old slave market, and stepped promptly ahead of a stout Pantalon. "Jack! You did come!" There was a note in the girl's voice as if she had disbelieved in her good fortune. "Oh, and beautiful as Roderick Dhu! Didn't I tell you that you could find something in that shop?" she declared in triumph. "Do you imagine that this came out of a costumer's?" Ryder swung her swiftly out in the fox trot before the crowd invaded the floor. "If Andy McLean could hear you! Why this, this is the real thing, the Scots-wha-hae-wi'-Wallace-bled stuff." "Who is Andy McLean?" "Andrew is Scotch, Single, and Skeptical. He is a great pal of mine and also an official of the Agricultural Bank which is by way of being a Government institution. These are the togs of his Hieland Grandsire--" "Why didn't you bring him?" "Too dead, unfortunately--grandsires often are--" "I mean Andrew McLean." "It would take you, my dear Jinny, to do that. You brought me--and I can believe in anything after the surprise of finding myself here." Jinny Jeffries laughed. "If I could only believe what you say!" "Oh, you can believe anything I say," Jack obligingly assured her. "I'm very careful what I _say_--" "I wish I were." "You'd have to be careful how you look, Jinny--and you can't help that. The Lord who gave you red hair must provide the way to elude its consequences.... I suppose the Orient isn't exactly a manless Sahara for you?" She countered, her bright eyes intent, "Is it a girl-less Sahara for you, Jack?" "The only woman I have laid a hand on, in kindness or unkindness, died before Ptolemy rebuilt Denderah." "That's not right--" "No? And I thought it such a virtuous record!" "I mean," Jinny laughed, "that you really ought to be seeing more of life--like to-night--" "To-night? Do you imagine this is a place for seeing life?" "Why not?" she retorted to the irony in his voice. "It's real people--not just dead and gone things in cases with their lives all lived. I don't care if you are going to be a very famous person, Jack, you ought to see more of the world. You have just been buried out here for two years, ever since you left college--"