Tentatively little Eve Edgarton inserted one foot in the timid slipper.  The path back to her room was certainly the simplest path that she knew—­and the dullest.  Equally tentatively she withdrew from the timid slipper and tried the adventurous one.  “O-u-c-h!” she cried out loud.  The sole of the second slipper seemed fairly sizzling with excitement.

With a slight gasp of impatience, then, she reached out and pulled the timid slipper back into line, stepped firmly into it, pointed both slipper-toes unswervingly southward, and proceeded on down-stairs to investigate the “Christian Dance.”

At the first turn of the lower landing she stopped short, with every ennui-darkened sense in her body “jacked” like a wild deer’s senses before the sudden dazzle of sight, sound, scent that awaited her below.  Before her blinking eyes she saw even the empty, humdrum hotel office turned into a blazing bower of palms and roses and electric lights.  Beyond this bower a corridor opened out—­more dense, more sweet, more sparkling.  And across this corridor the echo of the unseen ball came diffusing through the palms—­the plaintive cry of a violin, the rippling laugh of a piano, the swarming hum of human voices, the swish of skirts, the agitant thud-thud-thud of dancing feet, the throb, almost, of young hearts—­a thousand commonplace, every-day sounds merged here and now into one magic harmony that thrilled little Eve Edgarton as nothing on God’s big earth had ever thrilled her before.

Hurriedly she darted down the last flight of steps and sped across the bright office to the dark veranda, consumed by one fuming, passionate, utterly uncontrollable curiosity to see with her own eyes just what all that wonderful sound looked like!

Once outside in the darkness her confusion cleared a little.  It was late, she reasoned—­very, very late, long after midnight probably; for of all the shadowy, flickering line of evening smokers that usually crowded that particular stretch of veranda only a single distant glow or two remained.  Yet even now in the almost complete isolation of her surroundings the old inherent bashfulness swept over her again and warred chaotically with her insistent purpose.  As stealthily as possible she crept along the dark wall to the one bright spot that flared forth like a lantern lens from the gay ballroom—­crept along—­crept along—­a plain little girl in a plain little dress, yearning like all the other plain little girls of the world, in all the other plain little dresses of the world, to press her wistful little nose just once against some dazzling toy-shop window.

With her fingers groping at last into the actual shutters of that coveted ballroom window, she scrunched her eyes up perfectly tight for an instant and then opened them, staring wide at the entrancing scene before her.

“O—­h!” said little Eve Edgarton.  “O—­h!”