on the dresses and making momentary diamonds of them. The music panted. The musicians writhed and gyrated and sang and put on funny hats and beamed at all the prettiest of the girls. Innumerable feet stamped the last two notes of every tune they played. Collars were wilted, coiffures a little rumpled now. The stag-line was no longer a line, but a disbanded force roaming at large, grabbing right and left. There was intoxication. And there was another, subtler undertone . . . desirous eyes, fleet touch of mouths in shadowy corners. . . . The chaperones had almost all gone home to bed, after the immemorial manner of chaperones when they begin to be needed.
For a time Jock stood by himself, staring at the dancers, thinking. Molly had danced off with someone, forgetting him. He was glad, glad. What a relief! It was all over, then. Ended as affairs of the heart should properly end, by the decree of the lady in the case. He rather reveled in her final display of what he termed "backbone." For that he liked her better than for all the tears and kisses and all the meek devotion that had preceded it. Now if only she didn't repent in the morning and spoil it all—she wouldn't, though. She was past that at last. Funny how the thing had happened! An accident, succeeding where all his calculated hints had failed. He hadn't set out deliberately to irritate her when he picked up the magazine.
Boy, what a dizzy mob this was! Half of them tight. Plenty of headaches abroad in the land tomorrow. Prohibition . . . forbidden jam for children to smear themselves with. Funny how liquor did different things to different people. Some could control their legs but not their tongues, and vice versa. Girls . . . some stupid, blinking like sun-dazed owls,
