that her feet even so much as touched the ground. She was a wraith! A
phantasy! A fluctuant miracle of sound and sense!

Tremulously the singer's voice faltered in his throat to watch his
song come gray-ghost-true before his staring eyes. With scant
restraint the crowd along the walls pressed forward, half
pleasure-mad, to solve the mystery of the apparition. Abruptly the
song stopped! The dancer faltered! Lights blazed! A veritable shriek
of applause went roaring to the roof-tops!

And little Eve Edgarton in one wild panic-stricken surge of terror
went tearing off through a blind alley of palms, dodging a cafe table,
jumping an improvised trellis--a hundred pursuing voices yelling:
"Where is she? Where is she?"--the telltale tinsel scarf flapping
frenziedly behind her, flapping--flapping--till at last, between one
high, garnished shelf and another it twined its vampirish chiffon
around the delicate fronds of a huge potted fern! There was a
jerk,--a blur,--a blow, the sickening crash of fallen pottery--And
little Eve Edgarton crumpled up on the floor, no longer "colorless"
among the pale, dry, rainbow tints and shrill metallic glints of that
most wondrous scene.

Under her crimson mask, when the rescuers finally reached her, she lay
as perfectly disguised as even her most bashful mood could have
wished.

All around her--kneeling, crowding, meddling, interfering--frightened
people queried: "Who is she? Who is she?" Now and again from out of
the medley some one offered a half-articulate suggestion. It was the
hotel proprietor who moved first. Clumsily but kindly, with a fat hand