The scene was certainly the scene of a most madcap summer carnival.  Palms of the far December desert were there!  And roses from the near, familiar August gardens!  The swirl of chiffon and lace and silk was like a rainbow-tinted breeze!  The music crashed on the senses like blows that wasted no breath in subtler argument!  Naked shoulders gleamed at every turn beneath their diamonds!  Silk stockings bared their sheen at each new rompish step!  And through the dizzy mystery of it all—­the haze, the maze, the vague, audacious unreality,—­grimly conventional, blatantly tangible white shirt-fronts surrounded by great black blots of men went slapping by—­each with its share of fairyland in its arms!

“Why!  They’re not dancing!” gasped little Eve Edgarton.  “They’re just prancing!”

Even so, her own feet began to prance.  And very faintly across her cheek-bones a little flicker of pink began to glow.

Then very startlingly behind her a man’s shadow darkened suddenly, and, sensing instantly that this newcomer also was interested in the view through the window, she drew aside courteously to give him his share of the pleasure.  In her briefest glance she saw that he was no one whom she knew, but in the throbbing witchery of the moment he seemed to her suddenly like her only friend in the world.

“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” she nodded toward the ballroom.

Casually the man bent down to look until his smoke-scented cheek almost grazed hers.  “It certainly is!” he conceded amiably.

Without further speech for a moment they both stood there peering into the wonderful picture.  Then altogether abruptly, and with no excuse whatsoever, little Eve Edgarton’s heart gave a great, big lurch, and, wringing her small brown hands together so that by no grave mischance should she reach out and touch the stranger’s sleeve as she peered up at him, “I—­can dance,” drawled little Eve Edgarton.

Shrewdly the man’s glance flashed down at her.  Quite plainly he recognized her now.  She was that “funny little Edgarton girl.”  That’s exactly who she was!  In the simple, old-fashioned arrangement of her hair, in the personal neatness but total indifference to fashion of her prim, high-throated gown, she represented—­frankly—­everything that he thought he most approved in woman.  But nothing under the starry heavens at that moment could have forced him to lead her as a partner into that dazzling maelstrom of Mode and Modernity, because she looked “so horridly eccentric and conspicuous”—­compared to the girls that he thought he didn’t approve of at all!

“Why, of course you can dance!  I only wish I could!” he lied gallantly.  And stole away as soon as he reasonably could to find another partner, trusting devoutly that the darkness had not divulged his actual features.

Five minutes later, through the window-frame of her magic picture, little Eve Edgarton saw him pass, swinging his share of fairyland in his arms.