ward and talk with her.

"Why not?" said a wit. "The Duke of Donnycastle always shakes hands with
the pugilists at a mill."

"It is not so bad"--the speaker was a Washington beauty in an evening
dress that she would have condemned as indecorous for the dancer it is
not so bad as I--"

"Expected?" asked her companion, a sedate man of thirty-five, with the
cynical air of a student of life.

"As I feared," she added, quickly. "I have always had a curiosity to
know what these Oriental dances mean."

"Oh, nothing in particular, now. This was an exhibition dance. Of course
its origin, like all dancing, was religious. The fault I find with it
is that it lacks seriousness, like the modern exhibition of the dancing
dervishes for money."

"Do you think, Mr. Mavick, that the decay of dancing is the reason our
religion lacks seriousness? We are in Lent now, you know. Does this seem
to you a Lenten performance?"

"Why, yes, to a degree. Anything that keeps you up till three o'clock in
the morning has some penitential quality."

"You give me a new view, Mr. Mavick. I confess that I did not expect to
assist at what New Englanders call an 'evening meeting.' I thought Eros
was the deity of the dance."

"That, Mrs. Lamon, is a vulgar error. It is an ancient form of worship.
Virtue and beauty are the same thing--the two graces."

"What a nice apothegm! It makes religion so easy and agreeable."

"As easy as gravitation."

"Dear me, Mr. Mavick, I thought this was a question of levitation. You
are upsetting all my ideas. I shall not have the comfort of repenting of
this episode in Lent."

"Oh yes; you can be sorry that the dancing was not more alluring."

Meantime there was heard the popping of corks. Venetian glasses filled
with champagne were quaffed under the blessing of sparkling eyes, young
girls, almond-eyed for the occasion, in the costume of Tokyo, handed
round ices, and the hum of accelerated conversation filled the studio.

"And your wife didn't come?"

"Wouldn't," replied Jack Delancy, with a little bow, before he raised
his glass. And then added, "Her taste isn't for this sort of thing."

The girl, already flushed with the wine, blushed a little--Jack thought
he had never seen her look so dazzlingly handsome--as she said, "And you
think mine is?"

"Bless me, no, I didn't mean that; that is, you know"--Jack
didn't exactly see his way out of the dilemma--"Edith is a little
old-fashioned; but what's the harm i