"You're betting on a certainty and a fat ankle." "Sure. I've seen her ankles going upstairs too often.... What the devil is the old lady wearing under that domino?" "Wait till you see her later," said Quarren, delightedly. "She has come as Brunhilda." "I don't want to see three hundred pounds of relative as Brunhilda," growled Westguard. "You will, to-morrow. She's given her photograph to a _Herald_ man." "What did you let her do it for?" demanded Westguard wrathfully. "Could I help it?" "You could have stopped her. She thinks your opinion is the last lisp in fashionable art problems." "There are some things you can't tell a woman," said Quarren. "One of 'em concerns her weight." "Are you afraid of Mrs. Sprowl?" The Harlequin laughed: "Where would I be if I incurred your aunt's displeasure, dear friend?" "Out of the monkey house for good I suppose," admitted Westguard. "Lord, Ricky, what a lot you have had to swallow for the sake of staying put among these people!" Quarren sat meditating under his mask, cross-legged, twirling his sword, the crash of the floor orchestra dinning in his close-set ears. "Yes," he said without resentment, "I've endured my share. That's one reason why I don't want to let several years of humiliation go for nothing. I've earned whatever place I have. And I mean to keep it." Westguard turned on him half angrily, hesitated, then remained silent. What was the use? If Quarren had not been guilty of actually fawning, toadying, currying favour, he had certainly permitted himself to be rudely used. He had learned very thoroughly his art in the school of the courtier--learned how and when to be blind, silent, deaf; how to offer, how to yield, when and how to demand and exact. Which, to Westguard, meant the prostitution of intelligence. And he loathed the game like a man who is free to play it if he cares to. Of those who are denied participation, few really hate it. But he said nothing more; and the Harlequin, indolently stretching his glittering limbs, dropped a light hand on Westguard's cuirassed shoulder: "Don't be forever spoiling things for me, Karl. I really do enjoy the game as it lies." "It _does_ lie--that is the trouble, Rix." "I can't afford to criticise it.... Listen; I'm a mediocre man; I'd never count among real men. I count in the set which I amuse and which accepts me. Let me enjoy it, can't you?" An aged dandy, masked, painted, wizened, and dressed like Henri II, tottered by with a young girl on his arm, his shrill, falsetto giggle piercing the racket around them. "Do you wish to live to be like that?" asked Westguard sharply. "Oh, I'll die long before that," said Quarren cheerfully, and leaped lightly to his feet. "I shall now accomplish a little dancing," he said, pointing with his wooden sword at the tossing throng. "Venus send me a pretty married woman who really loves her husband.... By Bacchus! Those dancers are going it! Come on, Karl. Leave us foot it!"