into the ball-room, smilax-draped and glowing as if
eager to welcome the guests to come. Through it all she carried a prim
air, making businesslike notes on her little pad; but beneath her very
demure exterior raged a storm of rebellion that these things should be
and not be for her. The world was one huge sour grape; and yet she must
smile as though it tasted sweet. There were blurs in her eyes as she
stumbled up the back stairs, whither her way was pointed, that she might
stand in a corner of the dressing-room where the now fast-arriving
ladies were laying off their wraps. She swallowed a lump in her throat
and winked hard in the attempt to forget or ignore the careless looks
thrown at her by these ladies, as the maids removed the long cloaks made
more for splendor than for warmth, or drew up the gloves on bare arms
less lovely than her own. Many of the women looked twice at her, and
she thought, and resented the fact, that they were surprised to see so
much beauty. She could not be impersonal like the other
reporters,--sensible girls, taking all this as a part of the day's work,
and whispering names to one another, which Lena, too, must catch and
treasure for her reportorial harvest. She must glance with swift
inclusiveness at the more striking gowns, that later she may serve them
up in the technical slapdash of the social column.

An hour of it left her faint and sick, not with cynical scorn of the
spectacle, but with longing and self-pity. The crowd in the
dressing-room was thinning now, but, whether she had finished her duty
or not, she must escape. She could endure it no longer. Again she made
her way down the narrow non-angelic stairs and out at a little side
door. The night air was sweet and cold. She paused for a moment under
the light of the porte-cochere to watch the string of carriages and the
swirl of silk and laces that passed through the opening door, to listen
to gusts of music that came to an abrupt end as the outside door shut on
her.

Suddenly a figure loomed beside her, and she look up to see Dick
Percival, straight and big, with the electric light gleaming on his
white shirt-front, where his overcoat fell back. There was an unpleasant
sternness in his deeply-shadowed eyes.

"Miss Quincy!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here!"

"I was sent to report it," said Lena weakly. "I'm going home now."

"Going home alone? Nearly midnight?"

"What else can I do? It's what the other girls--reporters,