"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 you. My only motive was consideration for you, and for the sacred conventions of Sainte Grundy." "I believe," she said scornfully, "you are really trying to make me think that you _could_ have done it, and didn't!" "You are too clever to believe me a martyr to principle, madame!" She looked at him, stamped her foot till the bangles clashed. "Why _didn't_ you kiss me, then?--if you wish to spoil my victory?" "You yourself have told me why." "Am I wrong? Could you--didn't I surprise you--in fact, paralyse you--with astonishment?" He laughed delighted; and she stamped her ringing foot again.