The music ceased, the spell was lifted for a time.  And while old alliances were being dissolved and new ones formed in the eager promiscuity of this interval, all remarked proudly on the success of the evening; in the gleam of every eye the sway of the goddess was acknowledged.  Romance was justified.  Life itself was justified.  The shop-girl who had put ten thousand stitches into the ruching of her crimson skirt well symbolised the human attitude that night.  As leaning heavily on a man’s arm she crossed the floor under the blazing chandelier, she secretly exulted in each stitch of her incredible labour.  Two hours, and she would be back in the cold, celibate bedroom, littered with the shabby realities of existence; and the spotted glass would mirror her lugubrious yawn!  Eight hours, and she would be in the dreadful shop, tying on the black apron!  The crimson skirt would never look the same again; such rare blossoms fade too soon!  And in exchange for the toil, the fatigue, and the distressing reaction, what had she won?  She could not have said what she had won, but she knew that it was worth the ruinous cost—­this bright fallacy, this fleeting chimera, this delusive ecstasy, this shadow and counterfeit of bliss which the goddess vouchsafed to her communicants.

* * * * *

So thick and confused was the crowd that Leonora and Arthur, having inserted themselves into a corner near the west door, escaped the notice of any of their friends.  They were as solitary there as on the landing outside.  But Leonora saw quite near, in another corner, Ethel talking to Fred Ryley; she noticed how awkward Fred looked in his new dress-suit, and she liked him for his awkwardness; it seemed to her that Ethel was very beautiful.  Arthur pointed out Rose, who was standing up with the lady member of the School Board.  Then Leonora caught sight of Millicent in the distance, handing her programme to the conductor of the opera; she recalled the notorious boast of the conductor that he never knowingly danced with a bad dancer, whatever her fascinations.  Always when they met at a ball the conductor would ask Leonora for a couple of waltzes, and would lead her out with an air of saying to the company:  ‘Now see what fine dancing is!’ Like herself, he danced with the frigidity of a professor.  She wondered whether Arthur could dance really well.

The placard by the orchestra said, ‘Extra.’

‘Shall we?’ Arthur whispered.

He made a way for her through the outer fringe of people to the middle space where the couples were forming.  Her last thoughts as she gave him her hand were thoughts half-pitiful and half-scornful of John, David Dain, and the doctor, brutishly content in the refreshment-room.

There stole out, troubling the expectant air, softly, alluringly, invocatively, the first warning notes of that unique classic of the ball-room, that extraordinary composition which more than any other work of art unites all western nations in a common delight, which is adored equally by profound musicians and by the lightest cocottes, and which, unscathed and splendid, still miraculously survives the deadly ordeal of eternal perfunctory reiterance:  the masterpiece of Johann Strauss.