m and clouds of insects were wheeling round the light.
"The moths and the flame!" added Blair, satirically. "Well, Dare, old
bunkie, brace up and we'll go over the top. This ought to be fun for
us."

"I don't see it," replied Lane. "I'll be about as welcome as a bull in
a china shop."

"Oh, I didn't mean any one would throw fits over us," responded Blair.
"But we ought to get some fun out of the fact."

"What fact?" queried Lane, puzzled.

"Rather far-fetched, maybe. But I'll get a kick out of looking
on--watching these swell slackers with the girls _we_ fought for."

"Wonder why they didn't give the dance at the armory, where they'd not
have to climb stairs, and have more room?" queried Lane, as they went
in under the big light.

"Dare, you're far back in the past," said Blair, sardonically. "The
armory is on the ground floor--one big hall--open, you know. The
Assembly Hall is a regular maze for rooms and stairways."

Blair labored up the stairway with Lane's help. At last they reached
the floor from which had blared the strains of jazz. Wide doors were
open, through which Lane caught the flash of many colors. Blair
produced his tickets at the door. There did not appear to be any one
to take them.

Lane experienced an indefinable thrill at the scene. The air seemed to
reek with a mixed perfume and cigarette smoke--to resound with
high-keyed youthful laughter, wild and sweet and vacant above the
strange, discordant music. Then the flashing, changing, whirling
colors of the dancers struck Lane as oriental, erotic,
bizarre--gorgeous golds and greens and reds striped by the
conventional black. Suddenly the blare ceased, and the shrill,
trilling laughter had dominance. The rapid circling of forms came to a
sudden stop, and the dancers streamed in all directions over the
floor.

"Dare, they've called time," said Blair. "Let's get inside the ropes
so we can see better."

The hall was not large, but it was long, and shaped like a letter L
with pillars running down the center. Countless threads of
many-colored strings of paper had been stretched from pillars to
walls, hanging down almost within reach of the dancers. Flags and gay
bunting helped in the riotous effect of decoration. The black-faced
orchestra held forth on a raised platform at the point where the hall
looked two ways. Recesses, alcoves and open doors to other rooms,
which the young couples were piling over each other to reach, gave
Lane some inkling