sufficient. Then some one opened the doors from within; the
sound of the music, suddenly freed, rushed out and smote them; and they
entered the ball-room. She was acutely conscious of her beauty, and of
the distinction of his blanched, stern face.

* * * * *

The floor was thronged by entwined couples who, under the rhythmic
domination of the music, glided and revolved in the elaborate pattern of
a mazurka. With their rapt gaze, and their rigid bodies floating
smoothly over a hidden mechanism of flying feet, they seemed to be the
victims of some enchantment, of which the music was only a mode, and
which led them enthralled through endless curves of infallible beauty
and grace. Form, colour, movement, melody, and the voluptuous galvanism
of delicate contacts were all combined in this unique ritual of the
dance, this strange convention whose significance emerged from one
mystery deeper than the fundamental notes of the bass-fiddle, and lost
itself in another more light than the sudden flash of a shirt-front or
the tremor of a lock of hair. The goddess reigned. And round about the
hall, the guardians of decorum, the enemies of Aphrodite, enchanted too,
watched with the simplicity of doves the great Aphrodisian festival,
blind to the eternal verities of a satin slipper, a drooping eyelash, a
parted lip.

The music ceased, the spell was lifted for a time. And while old
alliances were being dissolved and new ones formed in the eager
promiscuity of this interval, all remarked proudly on the success of the
evening; in the gleam of every eye the sway of the goddess was
acknowledged. Romance was justified. Life itself was justified. The
shop-girl who had put ten thousand stitches into the ruching of her
crimson skirt well symbolised the human attitude that night. As leaning
heavily on a man's arm she crossed the floor under the blazing
chandelier, she secretly exulted in each stitch of her incredible
labour. Two hours, and she would be back in the cold, celibate bedroom,
littered with the shabby realities of existence; and the spotted glass
would mirror her lugubrious yawn! Eight hours, and she would be in the
dreadful shop, tying on the black apron! The crimson skirt would never
look the same again; such rare blossoms fade too soon! And in exchange
for the toil, the fatigue, and the distressing reaction, what had she
won? She could not have said what she had won, but she knew that it was
worth t