nt to Vandover that he had done something to displease her, and he
quickly concluded that it was because he had not asked her to go with
him that evening.

He turned from her to Henrietta Vance as though nothing unusual had
happened, resolving to see her later in the evening and in the meanwhile
invent some suitable excuse. Henrietta Vance did not even see his hand;
she was a very jolly girl, ordinarily, and laughed all the time. Now she
looked him squarely in the face without so much as a smile, at once
angry and surprised; never had anything seemed so hateful and
disagreeable. Vandover put his hand back into his pocket, trying to
carry it all off with a laugh, saying in order to make her laugh with
him as he used to do, "Hello! how do you do this evening? It's a
pleasant morning this afternoon." "How do you do?" she answered
nervously, refusing to laugh. Then she turned from him abruptly to talk
to young Haight's little cousin Hetty.

Mrs. Vance was neither embarrassed nor nervous as the girls had been.
She stared calmly at Vandover and said with a peculiar smile, "I am
surprised to see you here, Mr. Vandover."

An hour later the dance was in full swing. Almost every number was a
waltz or a two-step, the music being the topical songs and popular airs
of the day set to dance music.

About half-past ten o'clock, between two dances, the cornet sounded a
trumpet call; the conversation ceased in a moment, and Henrietta Vance's
brother, standing by the piano, called out, "The next dance will be the
_first extra_," adding immediately, "a _waltz_." The dance recommenced;
in the pauses of the music one heard the rhythmic movement of the feet
shuffling regularly in one-two-three time.

Some of the couples waltzed fast, whirling about the rooms, bearing
around corners with a swirl and swing of silk skirts, the girls' faces
flushed and perspiring, their eyes half-closed, their bare, white
throats warm, moist, and alternately swelling and contracting with their
quick breathing. On certain of these girls the dancing produced a
peculiar effect. The continued motion, the whirl of the lights, the heat
of the room, the heavy perfume of the flowers, the cadence of the music,
even the physical fatigue, reacted in some strange way upon their
oversensitive feminine nerves, the monotony of repeated sensation
producing some sort of mildly hypnotic effect, a morbid hysterical
pleasure the more exquisite because mixed with pain. These wer