Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/292

 She heard the wailing moans of an orchestra and was sensitive to vibrations of dance rhythm in the floor, though she had entered only a sort of vestibule set with empty tables, without covers, and straight-backed chairs. Pushing through a wider portal, screened by swinging doors, she came upon the dancers, skipping and swaying in customary manner over the broad, oblong center of the hall. The usual border of tables and chairs banded the dance-floor; many of these, perhaps as many as a third, were occupied by couples and parties of four who slouched, smoking and mumbling, or who sat, arms about each other, heads close together, or who guffawed, bent over bottles and urging upon each other drinks.

The sight of the hall in no way alarmed Joan Daisy; indeed, it actually reassured her, slightly, so like was it in aspect to midnight festivities to which she was familiar. She saw nothing startling in the big room, nothing especially unusual except the garish, Egyptianese extravagancies of the plaster and paint.

She attracted no significant attention either from the dancers, who glanced at her and Oliver, or from the drinkers at the tables, who gazed up and followed her idly with their eyes. No one indicated recognition of her; and the thumping of her heart lessened as she accompanied Oliver to a table for two and sat down.

She had not expected instantly to be known, for the weeks of the trial had brought her, repeatedly, experiences duplicating those of the days immediately following Ket's arrest, when her picture was in all the newspapers, and when people stared at her printed likeness and then looked up at herself and failed to suspect her identity. To make recognition more difficult to-night, she had donned a strange hat, and when she threw back her coat, she exposed, not the dress she had worn on the witness stand, but a dancing dress six months old.