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 crowd over Irwin Latrobe's shoulder. What a lot of gossip she would be prepared to disseminate on the morrow! thought Mary. Dick Sill was dancing with an unknown blonde in raspberry velvet, so light in complexion and yet so typically Negroid in her movements that it was impossible to be sure whether she were white or coloured. Carmen Fisher, in cloth of gold embroidered with pearls, clasped her brown arms languidly around the shoulders of Guymon Hooker. Galva Waldeck, in a Velazquez dress of orange taffeta embellished with wide bands of lace, was dancing with Léon Cazique. Mary began to wonder if this were a romance. She caught a glimpse of Sylvia Hawthorne, looking very tired, dancing with her husband. Rumsey Meadows, for once, was not in evidence. She saw Ray and Wren Hurley; she knew they must have motored in from New Jersey, where, fifty miles in the country, he was president of a small college. Montrose Esbon, who lived in Greenwich Village, wove his intricate way skilfully in and out of the dancers, holding Yuma Niland in his arms. Mimi Daquin, the pretty Creole, with her oval, cream-coloured face and her reddish-gold hair set off by her frock of absinthe-green, followed the music with Weston Underwood. . . . And there were hundreds more.

From the centre of the ceiling depended a huge, closed, silver bell which reflected the constantly shifting hues dispatched in broad shafts of light from