The Gray Nun | Page 2

dark eyes, which glowed near, very near, my own. And in mad career, regardless of the musical time or of the tune played, my curious partner tore around the room with me faster and faster, and with ever increasing fury. Her arms gripped me tighter and tighter and I was threatened with complete loss of breath in the wild race. Of a sudden I received a violent blow, resembling an electric shock, from each of her hands on my shoulders, felt myself all at once liberated, and staggered faint against a pyramid of plants. Boisterous laughter sounded on my ear; some other masks had surrounded and seized me, exclaiming:
"Look at the fine gentleman! He is out of his mind, dancing about the room like a madman, quite alone!"
I opened my eyes and looked all around. What had become of my partner?
Not a sign of her was to be seen, although this other room was likewise very large, just then not well filled with people.
"Have I been dancing alone?" I gasped, tearing the mask off my burning face.
"Quite alone! Did you imagine it was with your sweetheart?" was the mocking, noisy reply.
I was deeply annoyed. "Nonsense!" I cried. "You are all in the conspiracy! Where has the nun gone? It was no lady at all, it was a man in disguise!"
They laughed still more, and some whispered behind fans that I must be drunk.
Strange sensations invaded me. Had a joke been played at my expense? Had a member of the German legation dressed in female clothes, and in the height of his whimsical caprice danced with me in that insane fashion? Were the guests in the secret, and were they amusing themselves--as the freedom of the carnival permitted--with teasing a foreigner? Yet surely the mysterious nun must be discoverable. My knees were trembling from a weakness I was unable to account for, but I collected myself, and while various thoughts coursed through my brain for a solution of this carnival prank, I hastened with feverish speed through rooms and galleries in quest of the nun. But in vain. I espied neither herself, nor met anyone who had seen her. The lackeys and doorkeepers assured me in perfect good faith that they had seen no nun of any sort.
"The costume is one of which His Majesty does not approve," I was informed in the cloak-room. "It is considered irreverent to appear at balls here in the spiritual garb of a nun or a monk, and therefore it is not done. It would certainly have been observed by us had any lady or gentleman transgressed against the prevailing usage."
"Then perhaps I may have mistaken for a nun some other mask, who intended in her gray suit to represent Twilight or Care," I excused myself hesitatingly, though I had an accurate eye for dresses, and could have registered a solemn oath that the mysterious unknown was even wearing especially authentic claustral attire. No one, however, could by any effort remember having noticed a costume anything like that described by me.
"Are there any secret passages to any of the rooms and galleries which are the scene of tonight's festivities?" I asked a doorkeeper. He looked at me in surprise, and answered:
"All ways of communication were opened today because of the crowd of guests, but for safety's sake guarded and watched more carefully than usual. Only the tapestried corridor running the length of the great colonnade to the royal apartments was left unguarded, since in that place there is no possibility of improper intrusion."
A new idea flashed across me. The spot on which I had first set eyes on my nun was at the entrance to that corridor. Might not a member of the royal family have elected to make me, as a novice in this foreign court society, the subject of a merry jest? No doubt the nun was a man in disguise, and the young princes and dukes were probably capable of pouncing on the victim and dancing him to death.
My confusion was perhaps very diverting, and the secrecy of the few spectators of the joke, who were, of course, initiated, was quite praiseworthy.
They asserted not having seen a nun at all, and laughed at me for having rushed round the room alone, like a lunatic, Obviously there was no further room for doubt, this explanation and no other was valid. Why had I not thought of this before!
So I joined in the hilarity of the others and made the best of my discomfiture. In any case, the manner in which my partner had dismissed me betrayed a pair of powerful masculine fists! My shoulders, on which she had come down so vigorously ached as if they were broken, and I was still unable to conquer entirely a peculiar sensation of uneasiness. But while