"Well, _will_ you call it an equivalent to one week's subscription?" she asked very gravely.
Some long-sleeping devil of mischief awoke in Stanton's senses.
"Equivalent to one whole week's subscription?" he repeated with mock incredulity. "A whole week--seven days and nights? Oh, no! No! No! I don't think you've given me, yet, more than about--four days' worth to think about. Just about four days' worth, I should think."
Pushing the pink veil further and further back from her features, with plainly quivering hands, the girl's whole soul seemed to blaze out at him suddenly, and then wince back again. Then just as quickly a droll little gleam of malice glinted in her eyes.
"Oh, all right then," she smiled. "If you really think I've given you only four days' and nights' worth of thoughts--here's something for the fifth day and night."
Very casually, yet still very accurately, her right hand reached out to the knob of the door.
"To cancel my debt for the fifth day," she said, "do you really 'honest-injun' want to know who I am? I'll tell you! First, you've seen me before."
"What?" cried Stanton, plunging forward in his chair.
Something in the girl's quick clutch of the door-knob warned him quite distinctly to relax again into his cushions.
"Yes," she repeated triumphantly. "And you've talked with me too, as often as twice! And moreover you've danced with me!"
Tossing her head with sudden-born daring she reached up and snatched off her curly black wig, and shook down all around her such a great, shining, utterly glorious mass of mahogany colored hair that Stanton's astonishment turned almost into faintness.
"What?" he cried out. "What? You say I've seen you before? Talked with you? Waltzed with you, perhaps? Never! I haven't! I tell you I haven't! I never saw that hair before! If I had, I shouldn't have forgotten it to my dying day. Why--"
With a little wail of despair she leaned back against the door. "You don't even remember me _now_?" she mourned. "Oh dear, dear, dear! And I thought _you_ were so beautiful!" Then, woman-like, her whole sympathy rushed to defend him from her own accusations. "Oh, well, it was at a masquerade party," she acknowledged generously, "and I suppose you go to a great many masquerades."