Here a child of thirteen, with closed eyes and her peach-tinted cheek against her pimpled partner's, undulated to the music, scarcely moving her feet. Nearby there whirled, like a dervish, a girl to whose consumptive face the revolutions brought a glow that mimicked health. Now and then a woman would leap from one of the tables, embrace an unembarrassed man about the neck and so waltz off with him, at once passionate and mocking, both of them deaf to the plaudits of their spectators. From time to time the lights were suddenly extinguished, and the dance went on in the darkness amid a chorus of kisses, cries, and giggling. Most of the boys and men, and nearly all of the little girls, were drunk. Among the dancers, doubtless plying his trade, Mary saw Rafael Angelelli, sleek and radiant in a new suit of pale buff. He detected her a little later and, disposing of a pure-faced child, who had been in his arms, made a skillful way to his old acquaintance. He shook Mary's reluctant hand and, nodding to Carrie as if she were a familiar friend, sat down between the two women. "Where you been?" he affably inquired of Mary. "Out of town," said Mary, coldly. Angel shrugged his shoulders. He knew she lied, but he rarely contradicted a lady. "Meester Dyk' been lookin' all over theesa town for you, Violet," he said. Mary did not like the news. She was still afraid that she might be wanted in connection with her contradictory affidavits. Angel, however, readily reassured her. Just what Dyker wanted he did not, he said, know; but he was certain that it was something for her benefit. The magistrate had commissioned him to find her, and Angel had been searching, sporadically, for several weeks, even tracing her course back to the employment-agency and to that Mrs. Turner's where she had first worked. "Theesa woman say you steal," said the Italian. "She's a liar," answered Mary, hotly. "She say she tol' you so." "She tried to make out I took a cake of soap." "But she say after you leave she meess two dollar an' some silka stockin'." "That woman never wore no silk stockin's in her life, an' there wasn't two dollars in the house." Again the Italian shrugged his shoulders. He gave Mary to understand that, in his opinion, any woman who could steal and did not was a fool, and that any woman who stole and acknowledged it was a worse fool. But what, plainly, most interested him was the execution of his commission from Dyker. He talked so earnestly about it that he failed entirely to lay Mary's fears. She refused to give him her address, and as soon as he had left the table she endeavored to quit the hall.