To an onlooker, it might have been mirth-provoking if it hadn’t been, somehow, tear-compelling.  The thing that little Miss Hall was doing might have seemed trivial to one who did not know that it was magnificent.  It wasn’t dancing merely that she was teaching these awkward, serious, frightened boys.  She was handing them a key that would unlock the social graces.  She was presenting them with a magic something that would later act as an open sesame to a hundred legitimate delights.

She was strictly business, was Miss Hall.  No nonsense about her.  “One-two-three-four!  And a one-two three-four.  One-two-three-four!  And a turn-two, turn-four.  Now then, all together.  Just four straight steps as if you were walking down the street.  That’s it!  One-two-three-four!  Don’t look at me.  Look at my feet.  And a one-two three-four.”

Red-faced, they were.  Very earnest.  Pathetically eager and docile.  Weeks of drilling had taught them to obey commands.  To them the little dancing teacher whose white spats twinkled so expertly in the tangle of their own clumsy clumping boots was more than a pretty girl.  She was knowledge.  She was power.  She was the commanding officer.  And like children they obeyed.

Moran’s Barbary Coast experience stood him in good stead now, though the stern and watchful Miss Hall put a quick stop to a certain tendency toward shoulder work.  Tyler possessed what is known as a rhythm sense.  An expert whistler is generally a natural dancer.  Stella Kamps had always waited for the sound of his cheerful whistle as he turned the corner of Vernon Street.  High, clear, sweet, true, he would approach his top note like a Tettrazini until, just when you thought he could not possibly reach that dizzy eminence he did reach it, and held it, and trilled it, bird-like, in defiance of the laws of vocal equilibrium.

His dancing was much like that.  Never a half-beat behind the indefatigable Miss Weeks.  It was a bit laboured, at first, but it was true.  Little Miss Hall, with the skilled eye of the specialist, picked him at a glance.

“You’ve danced before?”

“No ma’am.”

“Take the head of the line, please.  Watch Mr. Kamps.  Now then, all together, please.”

And they were off again.

At 9.45 Tyler Kamps and Gunner Moran were standing in the crowded doorway of the ballroom upstairs, in a panic lest some girl should ask them to dance; fearful lest they be passed by.  Little Miss Hall had brought them to the very door, had left them there with a stern injunction not to move, and had sped away in search of partners for them.

Gunner Moran’s great scarlet hands were knotted into fists.  His Adam’s apple worked convulsively.

“Le’s duck,” he whispered hoarsely.  The jackie band in the corner crashed into the opening bars of a fox trot.

“Oh, it don’t seem—­” But it was plain that Tyler was weakening.  Another moment and they would have turned and fled.  But coming toward them was little Miss Hall, her blonde head bobbing in and out among the swaying couples.  At her right and left was a girl.  Her bright eyes held her two victims in the doorway.  They watched her approach, and were helpless to flee.  They seemed to be gripped by a horrible fascination.  Their limbs were fluid.