"Let's see," said Hough, consulting his watch. "Twelve o'clock!
Stanton's will be humming. We'll go in."

Neale did not want to show his reluctance, yet he did hot know just what
to say. After all, he was drifting. So he went.

It seemed that all the visitors who had been in the gambling-hall had
gravitated to this other dance-hall. The entrance appeared to be through
a hotel. At least Neale saw the hotel sign. The building was not made
of canvas, but painted wood in sections, like the scenes of a stage. Men
were coming and going; the hum of music and gaiety came from the rear;
there were rugs, pictures, chairs; this place, whatever its nature, made
pretensions. Neale did not see any bar.

They entered a big room full of people, apparently doing nothing. From
the opposite side, where the dance-hall opened, came a hum that seemed
at once music and discordance, gaiety and wildness, with a strange,
carrying undertone raw and violent.

Hough led Neale across the room to where he could look into the
dance-hall.

Neale saw a mad, colorful flash and whirl of dancers.

Hough whispered in Neale's ear: "Stanton throws the drunks out of here."

No, it appeared the dancers were not drunk with liquor. But there was
evidence of other drunkenness than that of the bottle. The floor was
crowded. Looking at the mass, Neale could only see whirling, heated
faces, white, clinging arms, forms swaying round and round, a wild
rhythm without grace, a dance in which music played no real part, where
men and women were lost. Neale had never seen a sight like that. He was
stunned. There were no souls here. Only beasts of men, and women for
whom there was no name. If death stalked in that camp, as Hough had
intimated, and hell was there, then the two could not meet too soon.

If the mass and the spirit and the sense of the scene dismayed Neale,
the living beings, the creatures, the women--for the men were beyond
him--confounded him with pity, consternation, and stinging regret. He
had loved two women--his mother and Allie--so well that he ought to love
all women because they were of the same sex. Yet how impossible! Had
these creatures any sex? Yet they were--at least many were--young, gay,
pretty, wild, full of life. They had swift suppleness, smiles, flashing
eyes, a look at once intent and yet vacant. But few onlookers would have
noticed that. The eyes for which the dance was meant saw the mad whirl,
the bare flesh, the brazen glances