Page:Our Philadelphia (Pennell, 1914).djvu/160

140 Square, having learned to dance together, gone to children's parties together, studied at Miss Irwin's school together, spent the summer by the sea and in the mountains together, in a word, from their having done everything together until they were united by close bonds, the closer for being undefinable, that I, Convent bred, with not an idea, not a habit, not a point of view, in common with them, could not break through. I never have got quite over the feeling, though time has modified it. There is no loneliness like the loneliness in a crowd, doubly so if all the others in the crowd know each other. In the dressing-room that first evening it was so overwhelming to discover myself entirely out of it where I should have been entirely in, that, without the stay and support of my friend, of old the Prince of Denmark to my Ghost of Hamlet's Father, and her sister, who had come out under more favourable conditions, I do not think I could have gone a step further in the great social adventure.

As it was, with my heart in my boots, my hand trembling on my Brother's arm, to the music of Hassler's band, I entered the big bare hall of the Natatorium, and was out with no more fuss and with nobody particularly excited about it save myself.

Things were a little better once away from the dressing-room. My Brother was gay, had been out for two or three years, knew everybody. If he could not introduce me to the women he could introduce the men to me, and the freemasonry existing among them from their all having