h, immediately after presenting Keith to one or two ladies
who were receiving, had been met and borne off by Ferdy Wickersham, and
was in the throng at the far end of the great apartment, and some one
had stopped Norman on the stairway. So Keith was left for a moment
standing alone just inside the door. He had a sense of being charmed.
Later, he tried to account for it. Was it the sight before him? Even
such perfect harmony of color could hardly have done it. It must be the
dazzling radiance of youth that almost made his eyes ache with its
beauty. Perhaps, it was the strain of the band hidden in the gallery
among those palms. The waltz music that floated down always set him
swinging back in the land of memory. He stood for a moment quite
entranced. Then he was suddenly conscious of being lonely. In all the
throng before him he could not see one soul that he knew. His friends
were far away.

Suddenly the wheezy strains of the fiddles and the blare of the horns in
the big dining-room of the old Windsor back in the mountains sounded in
his ears, and the motley but gay and joyous throng that tramped and
capered and swung over the rough boards, setting the floor to swinging
and the room to swaying, swam in a dim mist before his eyes. Girls in
ribbons so gay that they almost made the eyes ache, faces flushed with
the excitement and joy of the dance; smiling faces, snowy teeth,
dishevelled hair, tarlatan dresses, green and pink and white; ringing
laughter and whoops of real merriment--all passed before his senses.

As he stood looking on the scene of splendor, he felt lost, lonely, and
for a moment homesick. Here all was formal, stiff repressed; that gayety
was real, that merriment was sincere. With all their crudeness, those
people in that condition were all human, hearty, strong, real. He
wondered if refinement and elegance meant necessarily a suppression of
all these. There, men came not only to enjoy but to make others enjoy as
well. No stranger could have stood a moment alone without some one
stepping to his side and drawing him into a friendly talk. This mood
soon changed.

Still, standing alone near the door waiting for Norman to appear, Keith
found entertainment watching the groups, the splendidly dressed women,
clustered here and there or moving about inspecting or speaking to each
other. One figure at the far end of the room attracted his eye again and
again. She was standing with her back partly toward him, but he