haps he adapts his step to mine-at any rate, we move in harmony As the room becomes crowded we stop and sit down to look around us. Truly the scene is amusing enough, for everybody is revolving who has the means, without any question as to suitability in the age or size of that means: tall men dancing away from little partners, little men convulsively clutching tall women, old men and young maids, married women and young boys, fat girls dancing with Don Quixotes, Sancho Panzas, puffing round with lean virgins. Everybody seems to have got the wrong partner and not to mind it in the least. There are couples who rush round and round the room, crashing through every obstacle, and leaving overturned bodies, sore shins, and angry hearts behind; leisurely couples who tread their measures delicately, and are invariably overtaken and run down by the more bustling couples who come behind; couples who aimlessly drift about and are knocked to and fro by the rest. . . .
"I never saw myself dancing," I say to Paul, "but do you think I ever looked like that?" I glance at Miss Lister, whose head is wandering all over her partner's shirt front, seeking rest and finding none.
"I will look at you presently when you are dancing with somebody else, and tell you," he says.
"How well she dances!" I exclaim, nodding towards a mountain of fat that is going by, held together by a whipper-snapper whose arm refuses to go any farther than the last hook and eye. "Can you tell me why those enormous women go round so sweetly? They seem to turn on a pivot! What a pity it is this one does not live in a place I once heard of, where women are sold by the pound—flesh, not good looks, being considered the most marketable commodity!"
"Only she might object to being sold," says Paul, laughing. "Shall we go on again?"
