k. Then he turned his face to the corner and
drank. A moment later they were back on the floor, holding each other
tight, drunkenly swaying... Finally the last strains, a wall of
agony--"Ev-'ry one knows that I'm just Sec-ond-hand Rose--from Sec-ond
Av-en-ue."

The couples moved slowly off the floor, the pounding of the drums still
in their ears and in their blood; some of them sought the fraternity
booths; some of the girls retired to their dressing-room, perhaps to
have another drink; many of the men went outside for a smoke and to tip
a flask upward. Through the noise, the sex-madness, the half-drunken
dancers, moved men and women quite sober, the men vainly trying to
shield the women from contact with any one who was drunk. There was an
angry light in those men's eyes, but most of them said nothing, merely
kept close to their partners, ready to defend them from any too
assertive friend.

Again the music, again the tom-tom of the drums. On and on for hours. A
man "passed out cold" and had to be carried from the gymnasium. A girl
got a "laughing jag" and shrieked with idiotic laughter until her
partner managed to lead her protesting off the floor. On and on, the
constant rhythmic wailing of the fiddles, syncopated passion screaming
with lust, the drums, horribly primitive; drunken embraces.... "Oh,
those Wabash Blues--I know I got my dues--A lone-some soul am I--I feel
that I could die..." Blues, sobbing, despairing blues.... Orgiastic
music--beautiful, hideous! "Can-dle light that gleams--Haunts me in my
dreams..." The drums boom, boom, boom, booming--"I'll pack my walking
shoes, to lose--those Wa-bash Blues..."

Hour after hour--on and on. Flushed faces, breaths hot with passion and
whisky.... Pretty girls, cool and sober, dancing with men who held them
with drunken lasciviousness; sober men hating the whisky breaths of the
girls.... On and on, the drunken carnival to maddening music--the
passion, the lust.

Both Hugh and Cynthia were drinking, and by midnight both of them were
drunk, too drunk any longer to think clearly. As they danced, Hugh was
aware of nothing but Cynthia's body, her firm young body close to his.
His blood beat with the pounding of the drums. He held her tighter and
tighter--the gymnasium, the other couples, a swaying mist before his
eyes.

When the dance ended, Cynthia whispered huskily, "Ta-take me somewhere,
Hugh."

Strangely enough, he got the significance of her words at once. His