The sweep of a strong, clean chin was not to be disguised, and at the edge of the mask I caught now and then the gleam of white, even teeth, and the mocking smile of red, strongly curved lips, hid by her fan at the very moment when I was about to fix them in my memory, so that I might see them again and know.
I suspect she hid a smile, but her eyes looked up at me grandly and darkly.

Nineteen, perhaps twenty, I considered her age to be; gentle, and yet strong, with character and yet with tenderness, I made estimate that she must be; and that she had more brains than to be merely a lay figure I held sure, because there was something, that indefinable magnetism, what you like to call it, which is not to be denied, which assured me that here indeed was a woman not lightly to accept, nor lightly to be forgotten.

Ah, now I was seized and swept on in a swift madness.

Still the music sang on.
"My hostess said it would be a lottery to-night in this Row of Mystery," I went on, "but I do not find it so." "All life is lottery," she said in answer.
"And lotteries are lawful when one wins the capital prize.

One stretches out his hand in the dark.