e gate."

The man remained impassive, though he responded with a faint gleam
as Walter, looking back at him, produced for his benefit a cynical
distortion of countenance which offered little confirmation of Alice's
account of things. Then the door was swiftly opened to the brother and
sister; and they came into a marble-floored hall, where a dozen sleeked
young men lounged, smoked cigarettes and fastened their gloves, as they
waited for their ladies. Alice nodded to one or another of these, and
went quickly on, her face uplifted and smiling; but Walter detained her
at the door to which she hastened.

"Listen here," he said. "I suppose you want me to dance the first dance
with you----"

"If you please, Walter," she said, meekly.

"How long you goin' to hang around fixin' up in that dressin'-room?"

"I'll be out before you're ready yourself," she promised him; and kept
her word, she was so eager for her good time to begin. When he came
for her, they went down the hall to a corridor opening upon three great
rooms which had been thrown open together, with the furniture removed
and the broad floors waxed. At one end of the corridor musicians sat in
a green grove, and Walter, with some interest, turned toward these; but
his sister, pressing his arm, impelled him in the opposite direction.

"What's the matter now?" he asked. "That's Jazz Louie and his half-breed
bunch--three white and four mulatto. Let's----?"

"No, no," she whispered. "We must speak to Mildred and Mr. and Mrs.
Palmer."

"'Speak' to 'em? I haven't got a thing to say to THOSE berries!"

"Walter, won't you PLEASE behave?"

He seemed to consent, for the moment, at least, and suffered her to take
him down the corridor toward a floral bower where the hostess stood with
her father and mother. Other couples and groups were moving in the
same direction, carrying with them a hubbub of laughter and fragmentary
chatterings; and Alice, smiling all the time, greeted people on
every side of her eagerly--a little more eagerly than most of them
responded--while Walter nodded in a noncommittal manner to one or two,
said nothing, and yawned audibly, the last resource of a person who
finds himself nervous in a false situation. He repeated his yawn and
was beginning another when a convulsive pressure upon his arm made him
understand that he must abandon this method of reassuring himself. They
were close upon the floral bower.

Mildred was giving her hand to one and a