in the
air. Its lights were fled, its garlands dead all right, but there wasn't
anything poetic about it. However, there was another open door at the
far end of the room, through which sounds and light came in. And the
watchman hadn't interfered with her. Evidently she had chosen right.

She paused for a second steadying breath before she went through that
farther door, her eyes starry with resolution, her cheeks, just for the
moment, a little pale. If the comparison suggests itself to you of an
early Christian maiden about to step out into an arena full of wild
beasts, then you will have mistaken Rose. The arena was there, true
enough. But she was stepping out into it with the intention of, like
Androcles, taming the lion.

The room was hot and not well lighted--a huge square room with a very
high ceiling. In the farther wall of it was a proscenium arch and a
raised stage somewhat brighter than the room itself, though the stained
brick wall at the back, in the absence of any scenery, absorbed a good
deal of the light. On the stage, right and left, were two irregular
groups of girls, with a few men, awkwardly, Rose thought, disposed among
them. All were swaying a little to mark the rhythm of the music
industriously pounded out by a sweaty young man at the piano--a swarthy,
thick young man in his undershirt. There were a few more people, Rose
was aware without exactly looking at any of them, sprawled in different
parts of the hall, on sofas or cushioned window-seats.

It was all a little vague to her at first, because her attention was
focused on a single figure--a compact, rather slender figure, and tall,
Rose thought--of a man in a blue serge suit, who stood at the exact
center of the stage and the extreme edge of the footlights. He was
counting aloud the bars of the music--not beating time at all, nor
yielding to the rhythm in any way; standing, on the contrary, rather
tensely still. That was the quality about him, indeed, that riveted
Rose's attention and held her as still as he was, in the doorway--an
exhilarating sort of intensity that had communicated itself to the
swaying groups on the stage. You could tell from the way he counted that
something was gathering itself up, getting ready to happen. "Three ...
Four ... Five ... Six ... Seven ... _Now!_" he shouted on the eighth
bar, and with the word, one of the groups transformed itself. One of the
men bowed to one of the girls and began waltzing with her; another