The room had filled and the officials of the party had begun to line people up for the Grand March. Mary, loitering behind with the matrons, tried to persuade Blake to go in, but he resisted her. “You go in, if you want to,” he suggested. “I haven’t any partner; I don’t want to go. You walk with Madden. He wants to march.” They walked off arm in arm and he climbed to a bench and stood perched on high, to see more clearly. It was very colourful and pleasant; the Gymnasium did not look exactly like a palace, but it didn’t look at all like a schoolroom. In the centre, the marchers were lined up and the orchestra began to play “La Cucha-racha.” They marked time, moved, started off, and he saw them one by one as they passed. Some of the costumes were beautiful. Many of them had no appreciable connection with the period of the Conquistadores, but no one cared about that. The girls, at least, were faithful to their conceptions of Spain. There were short-skirted women with flat black hats, and long-skirted girls very bouffant and draped with lacy shawls. There were women with mantillas and women who had had to tie their high combs to their heads with silver ribbons or elastics, to hold them on in spite of their Eton crops. Some women had dressed for evening and then had relented enough to put roses in their hair. The men were armoured knights and cowboys and trappers and Indians. All sorts of Indians. Some were dressed in costumer’s leather and buckskin and some were last-minute affairs of plain shirts with tails out, and moccasins. Phil Ray had rebelled at the indeterminate Indian tendency: in reaction he was wearing a slouch cap and checked trousers from one of his dance costumes, and if anyone asked him why, he retorted, “I’m an Apache.” Everyone—men and women—had taken advantage of the Carnival to do what they wanted to do in the matter of paint. Boys were languishing and red-lipped, with fierce cork mustaches and Vandykes and heavy hairy eyebrows. Girls’ cheeks flamed orange and scarlet. As the room grew warmer, everyone began to streak slightly.