with little black ovals of masks pierced by gleaming eye-holes. I could
sense Barbara reading the room as it bore down on her, and reading it
clearly, getting whatever it was she had come there for. Myself, I was
overwhelmed, drowned in the size and sweep of everything, struggling
along, whispering to her when I spotted Jim Edwards in his friar's robe,
noticed that the Roman soldier who must be Cummings, and Bowman, the
Spaniard, squired the Thornhill twins in their geisha girl dresses; the
crimson poppies of a Lady of Dreams looked odd against Laura Bowman's
coppery hair.

At the head of the procession as they swung around, leading it with
splendid dignity, came a pair who might have been Emperor and Empress of
China--the Vandemans. To go on with affairs as if nothing had
happened--though Worth Gilbert was in jail--had been the laid-down
policy of both Vandeman and his wife. I'd thought it reasonable then;
foolish to get hot at it now. The great, shining, rhythmically moving
line deployed, interwove, and opened out again until at last the floor
was almost evenly occupied with the many-colored mass. I looked at
Barbara; the awful intensity with which she read her room hurt me. It
had nothing to do with that flirt of a glance she always gave a printed
page, that mere toss of attention she was apt to offer a problem. The
child was in anguish, whether merely the ache of sorrow, or actual
bodily pain; I saw how rigidly that small fist still pressed against the
knitted wool of her sweater, how her lip was drawn in and bitten. Her
physical weakness contrasted strangely with the clean cut decision, the
absolute certainty of her mental power. She raised her face and looked
straight up into mine.

"Have the music stopped."

I leaned over and down toward the orchestra leader to catch his eye,
holding toward him the badge. His glance caught it, and I told him what
we wanted. He nodded. For an instant the music flooded on, then at a
sharp rap of the baton, broke off in mid-motion, as though some great
singing thing had caught its breath. And all the swaying life and color
on the floor stopped as suddenly. Barbara had picked the moment that
brought Ina Vandeman and her husband squarely facing us. After the first
instant's bewilderment, Vandeman and his floor managers couldn't fail to
realize that they were being held up by an outsider; with Barbara in
full sight up here by the orchestra, they must know who was doing it. I
wonder