glance his wife had given, and he urged his
acceptance so warmly and with such real sincerity that finally
Keith yielded.

"This is not one of _the_ balls," said Norman, laughingly. "It is only
_a_ ball, one of our subscription dances, so you need have no scruples
about going along."

Keith looked a little mystified.

"Mrs. Creamer's balls are _the_ balls, my dear fellow. There, in
general, only the rich and the noble enter--rich in prospect and noble
in title--"

"Norman, how can you talk so!" exclaimed Mrs. Wentworth, with some
impatience. "You know better than that. Mrs. Creamer has always been
particularly kind to us. Why, she asks me to receive with her
every winter."

But Norman was in a bantering mood. "Am not I rich and you noble?" he
laughed. "Do you suppose, my dear, that Mrs. Creamer would ask you to
receive with her if we lived two or three squares off Fifth Avenue? It
is as hard for a poor man to enter Mrs. Creamer's house as for a camel
to pass through the needle's eye. Her motions are sidereal and her orbit
is as regulated as that of a planet."

Mrs. Wentworth protested.

"Why, she has all sorts of people at her house--!"

"Except the unsuccessful. Even planets have a little eccentricity of
orbit."

An hour or two later Keith found himself in such a scene of radiance as
he had never witnessed before in all his life. Though, as Norman had
said, it was not one of the great balls, to be present at it was in some
sort a proof of one's social position and possibly of one's pecuniary
condition.

Keith was conscious of that same feeling of novelty and exhilaration
that had come over him when he first arrived in the city. It came upon
him when he first stepped from the cool outer air into the warm
atmosphere of the brilliantly lighted building and stood among the young
men, all perfectly dressed and appointed, and almost as similar as the
checks they were receiving from the busy servants in the cloak-room. The
feeling grew stronger as he mounted the wide marble stairway to the
broad landing, which was a bower of palms and flowers, with handsome
women passing in and out like birds in gorgeous plumage, and gay voices
sounding in his ears. It swept over him like a flood when he entered the
spacious ball-room and gazed upon the dazzling scene before him.

"This is Aladdin's palace," he declared as he stood looking across the
large ball-room. "The Arabian Nights have surely come again."

Mrs. Wentwort