its eddy, and
finally cast them, ruffled like birds that have ridden a storm, on the
more generous space of the wide, upward stair.

From here, looking down on the current sweeping past them, the little
islands of black coats seemed fairly drowned in the feminine sea around
them--the flow of white, of pale blue and rose, and the high chatter,
like a cage of birds, that for the evening held possession.

"Ladies' Night!" Harry Cressy mopped his flushed face. "It's awful!"

Flora laughed in the effervescence of her spirits. She wanted to know,
teasingly, as they mounted, if this were why he had brought two more to
add to the lot. He only looked at her, with his short note of laughter
that made her keenly conscious of his right to be proud of her. She was
proud of herself, inasmuch as herself was shown in the long trail of
daring blue her gown made up the stair, and the powdery blue of the
aigrette that shivered in her bright, soft puffs and curls--proud that
her daring, as it appeared in these things, was still discriminating
enough to make her right.

She could recall a time when she had not even been quite sure of her
clothes. Not Clara's subdued rustle at her side could make her doubt
them now; but her security was still recent enough to be sometimes
conscious of itself. It was so short a time since all these talking
groups, that made a personage of her, had had the power to put her quite
out of countenance. The women who craned over their shoulders to speak
to her--how hard she had had to work to make them see her at all! And
now she did not know which she felt more like laughing at, herself or
them, for having taken it so seriously. For, when one thought of it,
wasn't it absurd that people out of nowhere should suppose themselves
exclusive? And people out of nowhere they were, herself and all the rest
of them. From causes not far dissimilar they had drifted or scrambled to
where they now stood. It was a question of squatter rights. The first on
the ground were dictators, and how long they could hold their claim
against invaders a dubious cast of fate. For there were for ever fresh
invasions, and departures; swift risings from obscurity, sudden fallings
back into oblivion, brilliant shootings through of strange meteors; and
in the tide of fluctuation, the things that were established or
traditional upon this coast of chance were mere islands in the wash of
ocean. It was amazing, it was almost frightening, the fluid