When they grew tired of baiting him, and were looking about for other prey, the red mask redoubled his show of devotion to Mrs. Bowen, and the other masks began to flock round and approve.
“Oh, now,” she said, with a little embarrassed laugh, in which there was no displeasure, “I think you may ask him to go away. But don’t be harsh with him,” she added, at a brusque movement which Colville made toward the mask.
“Oh, why should I be harsh with him? We’re not rivals.” This was not in good taste either, Colville felt. “Besides, I’m an Italian too,” he said, to retrieve himself. He made a few paces toward the mask, and said in a low tone, with gentle suggestion, “Madame finds herself a little incommoded.”
The mask threw himself into an attitude of burlesque despair, bowed low with his hand on his heart, in token of submission, and vanished into the crowd. The rest dispersed with cries of applause.
“How very prettily you did it, both of you!” said Mrs. Bowen. “I begin to believe you are an Italian, Mr. Colville. I shall be afraid of you.”
“You weren’t afraid of him.”
“Oh, he was a real Italian.”
“It seems to me that mamma is getting all the good of the veglione,” said Effie, in a plaintive murmur. The well-disciplined child must have suffered deeply before she lifted this seditious voice.
“Why, so I am, Effie,” answered her mother, “and I don’t think it’s fair myself. What shall we do about it?”
“I should like something to eat,” said the child.
“So should I,” said Colville. “That’s reparation your mother owes us all. Let’s make her take us and get us something. Wouldn’t you like an ice, Miss Graham?”
“Yes, an ice,” said Imogene, with an effect of adding, “Nothing more for worlds,” that made Colville laugh. She rose slowly, like one in a dream, and cast a look as impassioned as a look could be made through a mask on the scene she was leaving behind her. The band was playing a waltz again, and the wide floor swam with circling couples.
The corridor where the tables were set was thronged with people, who were drinking beer and eating cold beef and boned turkey and slices of huge round sausages. “Oh, how can they?” cried the girl, shuddering.
“I didn’t know you were so ethereal-minded about these things,” said Colville. “I thought you didn’t object to the salad at Madame Uccelli’s.”
“Oh, but at the veglione!” breathed the girl for all answer. He laughed again, but Mrs. Bowen did not laugh with him; he wondered why.
When they returned to their corner in the theatre they found a mask in a black domino there, who made place for them, and remained standing near. They began talking freely and audibly, as English-speaking people incorrigibly do in Italy, where their tongue is all but the language of the country.
“Really,” said Colville, “I think I shall stifle in this mask. If you ladies will do what you can to surround me and keep me secret, I’ll take it off a moment.”
“I believe I will join you, Mr. Colville,” said the mask near them. He pushed up his little visor of silk, and discovered the mild, benignant features of Mr. Waters.
“Bless my soul!” cried Colville.
Mrs. Bowen was apparently too much shocked to say anything.
“You didn’t expect to meet me here?” asked the old man, as if otherwise it should be the most natural thing in the world. After that they could only unite in suppressing their astonishment. “It’s extremely interesting,” he went on, “extremely! I’ve been here ever since the exercises began, and I have not only been very greatly amused, but greatly instructed. It seems to me the key to a great many anomalies in the history of this wonderful people.”
If Mr. Waters took this philosophical tone about the Carnival, it was not possible for Colville to take any other.
“And have you been able to divine from what you have seen here,” he asked gravely, “the grounds of Savonarola’s objection to the Carnival?”
“Not at all,” said the old man promptly. “I have seen nothing but the most harmless gaiety throughout the evening.”
Colville hung his head. He remembered reading once in a passage from Swedenborg, that the most celestial angels had scarcely any power of perceiving evil.
“Why aren’t you young people dancing?” asked Mr. Waters, in a cheerful general way, of Mrs. Bowen’s party.
Colville was glad to break the silence. “Mrs. Bowen doesn’t approve of dancing at vegliones.”
“No?—why not?” inquired the old man, with invincible simplicity.
Mrs. Bowen smiled her pretty, small smile below her mask.
“The company is apt to be rather mixed,” she said quietly.
“Yes,” pursued Mr. Waters; “but you could dance with one another. The company seems very well behaved.”
“Oh, quite so,” Mrs. Bowen assented.
“Shortly after I came,” said Mr. Waters, “one of the masks asked me to dance. I was really sorry that my age and traditions forbade my doing so. I tried to explain, but I’m afraid I didn’t make myself quite clear.”
“Probably it passed for a joke with her,” said Colville, in order to say something.
“Ah, very likely; but I shall always feel that my impressions of the Carnival would have been more definite if could have danced. Now, if I were a young man like you—”
Imogene turned and looked at Colville through the eye-holes of her mask; even in that sort of isolation he thought her eyes expressed surprise.
“It never occurred to you before that I was a young man,” he suggested gravely.
She did not reply.
After a little interval, “Imogene,” asked Mrs. Bowen, “would you like to dance?”
Colville was astonished. “The veglione has gone to your head, Mrs. Bowen,” he tacitly made his comment. She had spoken to Imogene, but she glanced at him as if she expected him to
