People looked at her; they always did.  Not only the non-dancers watched her; eyes everywhere were upon her, even though the owners gyrated, glided and dipped on distant orbits.  The other girls watched her, as a rule, with a profound, an almost passionate curiosity; and they were prompt to speak well of her to men, except in trustworthy intimacy, because they did not enjoy being wrongfully thought jealous.  Many of them kept somewhat aloof from her; but none of them ever nowadays showed “superiority” in her presence, or snubbed her:  that had been tried and proved disastrous in rebound.  Cora never failed to pay her score—­and with a terrifying interest added, her native tendency being to take two eyes for an eye and the whole jaw for a tooth.  They let her alone, though they asked and asked among themselves the never-monotonous question:  “Why do men fall in love with girls like that?” a riddle which, solved, makes wives condescending to their husbands.

Most of the people at this dance had known one another as friends, or antagonists, or indifferent acquaintances, for years, and in such an assembly there are always two worlds, that of the women and that of the men.  Each has its own vision, radically different from that of the other; but the greatest difference is that the men are unaware of the other world, only a few of them—­usually queer ones like Ray Vilas—­vaguely perceiving that there are two visions, while all the women understand both perfectly.  The men splash about on the surface; the women keep their eyes open under water.  Or, the life of the assembly is like a bright tapestry:  the men take it as a picture and are not troubled to know how it is produced; but women are weavers.  There was a Beauty of far-flung renown at Mrs. Villard’s to-night:  Mary Kane, a creature so made and coloured that young men at sight of her became as water and older men were apt to wonder regretfully why all women could not have been made like Mary.  She was a kindly soul, and never intentionally outshone her sisters; but the perfect sumptuousness of her had sometimes tried the amiability of Cora Madison, to whom such success without effort and without spark seemed unfair, as well as bovine.  Miss Kane was a central figure at the dance, shining tranquilly in a new triumph:  that day her engagement had been announced to Mr. George Wattling, a young man of no special attainments, but desirable in his possessions and suitable to his happiness.  The pair radiated the pardonable, gay importance of newly engaged people, and Cora, who had never before bestowed any notice upon Mr. Wattling, now examined him with thoughtful attention.

Finding him at her elbow in a group about a punch bowl, between dances, she offered warm felicitations.  “But I don’t suppose you care whether I care for you to be happy or not,” she added, with a little plaintive laugh;—­“you’ve always hated me so!”

Mr. Wattling was startled:  never before had he imagined that Cora Madison had given him a thought; but there was not only thought, there was feeling, in this speech.  She seemed to be concealing with bravery an even deeper feeling than the one inadvertently expressed.  “Why, what on earth makes you think that?” he exclaimed.