nge along the walls, and was unevenly hung with school flags and
patriotic bunting, Una found the empty-headed time-servers, the Little
Folk, to whom she was so superior in the class-room. Brooklyn Jews used
to side-street dance-halls, Bronx girls who went to the bartenders'
ball, and the dinner and grand ball of the Clamchowder Twenty, they
laughed and talked and danced--all three at once--with an ease which
dismayed her.

To Una Golden, of Panama, the waltz and the two-step were solemn
affairs. She could make her feet go in a one-two-three triangle with
approximate accuracy, if she didn't take any liberties with them. She
was relieved to find that Todd danced with a heavy accuracy which kept
her from stumbling.... But their performance was solemn and joyless,
while by her skipped Sam Weintraub, in evening clothes with black velvet
collar and cuffs, swinging and making fantastic dips with the lovely
Miss Moore, who cuddled into his arms and swayed to his swing.

"Let's cut out the next," said Todd, and she consented, though Sanford
Hunt came boyishly, blushingly up to ask her for a dance.... She was
intensely aware that she was a wall-flower, in a row with the anxious
Miss Ingalls and the elderly frump, Miss Fisle. Sam Weintraub seemed to
avoid her, and, though she tried to persuade herself that his greasy,
curly, red hair and his pride of evening clothes and sharp face were
blatantly Jewish, she knew that she admired his atmosphere of
gorgeousness and was in despair at being shut out of it. She even feared
that Sanford Hunt hadn't really wanted to dance with her, and she
wilfully ignored his frequent glances of friendliness and his efforts to
introduce her and his "lady friend." She was silent and hard, while poor
Todd, trying not to be a radical and lecture on single-tax or municipal
ownership, attempted to be airy about the theater, which meant the one
show he had seen since he had come to New York.

From vague dissatisfaction she drifted into an active resentment at
being shut out of the world of pretty things, of clinging gowns and
graceful movement and fragrant rooms. While Todd was taking her home she
was saying to herself over and over, "Nope; it's just as bad as parties
at Panama. Never really enjoyed 'em. I'm out of it. I'll stick to my
work. Oh, drat it!"

Sec. 4

Blindly, in a daily growing faith in her commercial future, she shut out
the awkward gaieties of the school, ignored Todd and Sanford Hunt