But, silent, containing her true feelings, she applied the atomizer’s light, esthetic kisses on Marcia’s slender neck, at the nape and a deft touch of the spray scented the debutante’s shell-exquisite earlobes as well.

“That’s enough, Marie,” said Marcia sharply, her voice somewhat strident and betraying her secret dread of the ordeal to come, in which she must exert all her wiles to save her precious treasure of maidenhood. “

For she was virgin-cold, fruitless virgin, who has known her powers of sensual provocation and usurped them for the sole purpose of enticing the male to become her feckless servitor, not her ardent lover-that never!

To yield the essence of her freedom to the detestable and pawing embraces of a man-loath some, utterly! “As you say, mam’selle.”

“As you say-bah, you’ve no more spirit than a slave. And what I said to you this morning about how Russian nobility treat their domestics is true, every word of it. When we get back to New York, I’ll have you discharged, Marie. I don’t mind telling you now I’m about fed up with your fawning and your listless service.”

Marie was about to respond-and who knows what, under the lash of those arrogant words, she might not have replied-when suddenly, there came the sound of a key turning in the lock.

Marie’s hand flew to her bosom. She stood, trembling, her eyes dilated; Marcia rose from her chair, pale, breathing quickly.

The door slowly opened.

The gowned directress of the establishment entered the room and, to the consternation of Marcia, an elegantly attired man, in tuxedo, faultless in sartorial elegance by all decrees of New York’s Four Hundred, followed behind her.

But what cast greatest terror into the vain and supercilious Marcia’s heart was the fact that on his suave features the unknown man wore a black silk mask, hiding his identity.