Then he had cried himself to
sleep because there wasn't any Santa Claus and because he didn't have
a sweetheart. But the consolations of six are denied to twenty-five.
On the second floor he followed directions and turned to the right.
The dressing-rooms were deserted, the maids having taken their seats
on the steps to peep at the dancers below. He, too, paused, and looked
down at the gaily whirling throng. There was his old familiar world,
the fellows he had been through college with, the girls he had flirted
with, the very music he had danced to, times without numbers. And he
was as much out of it all as if he had died of the fever in that gray
old hospital in Singapore? Ah, if he only had!
He turned abruptly and started up the second flight of stairs, and as
he did so something rose precipitately from the steps, and fluttered
ahead of him.
He looked up and as he did so chaos broke loose within him. There at
the top, in the subdued light from the upper hall, startled,
uncertain, off her guard stood Miss Lady, not the pretty, harum-scarum
girl of his dreams, but a beautiful, wistful woman with trembling lips
and startled eyes, who held out her hands to him in involuntary
welcome.
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