"With whom do you want to dance?
It's your triumph, Jack." She was alight and alive with the victory, and her eyes roved over the crowd.
"The big man with the tawny hair." "But he's making right past us." "No; he'll turn and come back." "How do you know ?" For answer she glanced up and laughed, and he realized with a singular sense of loneliness that she knew many things which were beyond his ken.

Someone touched his arm, and a voice, many voices, beset him.
"How's the chances for a dance with the girl, partner ?" "This dance is already booked," Pierre answered, and kept his eyes on the tall man with the scarred face and the resolute jaw.

He wondered why Jacqueline had chosen such a partner.
At least she had prophesied correctly, for the big man turned toward them just as he seemed about to head for another part of the hall.

The crowd gave way before him, not that he shouldered them aside, but they seemed to feel the coming of his shadow before him, and separated as they would have done before the shadow of a falling tree.
In another moment Pierre found himself looking up to the giant.

No mask could cover that long, twisting mark of white down his cheek, nor hide the square set of the jaw, nor dim the steady eyes.
And there came to Pierre an exceedingly great uneasiness in his right hand, and a twitching of the fingers low down on his thigh where the familiar holster should have hung.