"I’m not glum," she said with a forced little laugh, "I’m thirsty, Senior Bacchus! Isn’t that enough to sadden any girl?" Later Helen, returning from the floor, paused beside Stephanie to bend over her and whisper: "Harry Belter is behaving like a fool. Don’t take anything more, Steve." The girl lifted her flushed face and laughed: "I feel like flinging discretion into the ’fire of spring,’" she said. "That’s where most of these people’s clothing has disappeared, I fancy." Excitement burned in her pink cheeks and wide grey eyes, and she stood up in the box looking about her, poised lightly as some slim winged thine on the verge of taking flight. Grismer rose too and whispered to her, but she made a slight, impatient movement with her shoulders. "Won’t you dance this with me?" he repeated, touching her arm. "No," she said under her breath. "You annoy me, Oswald." "What!" "Please don’t be quite so devoted.... I’m restless." She turned and started to leave the box. The others were leaving too, for dancing had begun again. But at the steps she parted with the jolly little company, they descending to the floor, she turning to mount the steps alone. "Where on earth are you going, Steve?" called back Helen, halting on the steps below. "I want to see the floor from the top gallery!" replied Stephanie, without turning her head; and she ran lightly upward, her bells and bangles jingling. Half way up she turned her head. She had not been followed, but she saw Grismer below looking up, watching her flight. And she made no sign of recognition, no gay gesture of amity and adieu; she turned her back and sped upward through the clamour and hazy brilliancy, turned into the first corridor, and vanished like a firefly in a misty thicket. *CHAPTER XIX* At three in the morning the Ball of the Gods was in full and terrific blast and still gathering momentum. A vast musical uproar filled the Garden; the myriad lights glittered like jewels through a fog; the dancing floor was a bewildering, turbulent whirlpool of colour. Few if any of the dancers had reached the point of satiation; a number, however, had attained the state of saturation. As far as Cleland could see the only difference between this and a more miscellaneous assemblage seemed to be that the majority of people here knew how to ignore unpleasant lapses in others and how to efface themselves if surprised into accidental indiscretion. With Lady Button-eyes on his arm he had threaded his way into the supper-room, where the gods, demi-gods and heroes were banqueting most riotously.