hair, a
weak chin, and the free-and-easy, all-conquering manner of a youth who
has been spoiled by girls ever since he put on long trousers and
learned to run his own car, he looked at Alma with that look of
startled admiration which to a young girl is a sweeter flattery than
any that words can frame. She looked up at Nancy with a glance of
joyous, innocent triumph, and then, putting her plump little hand on
her partner's arm, and instantly meeting his gallantry with the pretty,
utterly unconscious coquetry of a born flirt, she moved off.

Nancy, still standing at the foot of the stairs, watched the yellow
head as it passed among the heads of the other dancers. That quick,
happy glance of Alma's had said, "Forgive me for being so pretty. You
are better, and finer, and more beautiful--but they haven't found it
out yet."

She stood alone, terribly shy, her smooth cheeks flushing scarlet, and
her bright eyes searching timidly for some friendly corner where she
could run and hide herself away for the rest of the evening. Without
Alma beside her to be petted and protected, she looked almost
pathetically just what she was--a modest young girl, who was peculiarly
lovely and appealing, as she stood waiting with a beating heart to
catch a friendly eye in all that terrible, gay, selfish throng of
pleasure-seekers.

CHAPTER V

A RETICENT GENTLEMAN--AND MISS BANCROFT

With only the one aim of getting to harbor by hook or crook, Nancy, her
cheeks burning with shyness, edged her way along the wall. She would
not have felt half so much alone if she had been dropped into the
middle of the Sahara desert, and, while her little feet tingled with
the rhythm of the music, she surrendered herself to the unhappy
conviction that she was doomed to be a wall-flower.

She did not know these people; she felt as if she could never know
them. Everything in their manner, their speech and their dress
suggested a foreignness to her own nature that could never be bridged,
unless she herself changed and became another being. It was something
that she could not define, this difference; it was simply something
that grew out of a different way of thinking and feeling about life.
All these people seemed to make pleasure their business, the most
important purpose of their existence, and this attitude, expressed in
the very way that the girls carried themselves, in the tones of their
voices, in their light scraps of inconsequential and no