The dance and rigid music gave way to innumerable little eddies physical and murmurous, of conversation. The long hall shrunk in this more intricate design. The crowd turned upon itself with false gestures of ease, deeply aware of its own stiffness. All of this life moved as if embarrassed by what neighbored it. So its impulse became broken also, its voice became a sum of flinty, too small mosaics, its movements lignified. Here and there was the gleam of an eye lit by a mind. And where that was, there was a note dissenting, a line out of all composition with the rest. Quincy was learning balance. He held himself erect in this disharmony of currents, joined so compactly because the place and the purpose formed a like disharmony. He was swirled about here, like a canoeist amid mild breakers, where the ocean meets the land and it is neither land nor ocean. There was no sense here of direction so that his swirling to and fro was proper. All that was needed was not to be submerged. And this prowess, Quincy had attained. By being aware of the unit of all this, the surface grew hard beneath him so as to support him. In this consciousness, he was sustained from pressing upon one point, from sinking with a weight of interest below the convention-outlined waves. So long as he could survive in this impersonality, he was safe. And then, he espied Clarice Lodge. With this stress, the dance grew tenuous; the crowd turned from hard, choked material to vapor; the music which had been obtrusive, separate, was a mere rhythm of accompaniment. All of it in a trice became an incense to him. It had been external, alien--copable. Now, it was no case of balancing above it nor of falling in. All of it was an atmosphere. And all of him was a maze of pores, aching and yearning to receive. He pressed his way toward her through shreds and fragments of life that gesticulated, gyred, sent up and over him their acrid wafts of perfume. A silk gown swished against him; a bare arm touched his hand; a pointed slipper scarred the surface of his own. The couples stood close together, clapped their hands metallically for an encore. The band turned back into the nearly naked rhythm it had just torn to scraps--repiecing it. The couples swayed and slid away. He lost his quarry in the once more thickening, knotted turmoil--half substance and half atmosphere. He was whiffed to the margin of it. He stood now, flanked by a long straggled row of men, until once more the music gave him respite to resume his search.