His shoulder knots gave him an effect of greater broadness, and when he walked his long saber smote militantly against the wide yellow stripe that ran down his leg. His face, tanned to a chronic brown by the suns of the Southwest, where he had been chasing Apaches for three years, was red to-night with the heat and the excitement of this social expression of the civilization he was so glad to get back to, and his yellow hair, cropped close in the military style, was twisting tightly at his brow into the curls that he would have cultivated had he been trained to some practical occupation. The eclipsed civilian was glad enough when the band struck up a waltz, and rescued him from Dade's comparative studies of uniforms, for if he did not quite recover his individuality with his new partner, he could at least forget it in the vertiginous mazes of the dance. Dade, left alone, began to long for Beck's coming to save her from the ignominy of a wallflower, and, under the stress of this apprehension, she held herself more stiffly with the intention of acquiring thereby a greater visibility, and of expressing that reproach site meant him to feel in the moment when he should discover her thus deserted. She could see him still dashing here and there on the outlook for her. He had left the middle of the floor where the gyrating dancers made his position absurd and even dangerous, and now, applying the tactics of his arm of the service, was beating up the walls of the room, feeling that there somewhere, his scout must end. When he saw her at last, his perspiring face lit up, and he bore down upon her in triumph. He sank into the chair beside her, and, drawing out a handkerchief, began to pat his brow delicately with it, though he would have liked to give his hot face a good scrubbing. "Have yo' all been having a good tahm?" drawled Dade, with her eyes far away to where the Chinese minister was cross-examining some woman on the subject of her age and her maiden name. "No," Beck said, bluntly. "Ah should think yo' would," Dade replied, coldly. Beck looked at her in alarm. "Why?" he ventured. "Yo' seemed to have difficulty in teahing yo'self away." Beck's alarm became positive. "I have been looking for you everywhere," he said in earnest defense. "And then," she continued, as if to eliminate herself from consideration as quickly as possible, "ah yo' not in unifohm?" She turned toward him, and inclining her head over her white shoulder, looked at him with an eye to sartorial effects. "If you only knew how hot this dress uniform is!" He scoured his whole visage with his handkerchief, and angrily pulled at the collar that was binding his neck. "But just think how remahkably well yo' all look in it," she said, her lips parting in a mocking smile. "Don't, please," he said, quite seriously. "Do you think we live only for uniforms?"