It was the last dance. Billy Snow, slim and young, was a good partner, and Dosia’s feet were light, yet, for the first time that evening, she did not feel the buoyancy of dancing; the flavor of it was lost. As they circled around the room, she saw that the booths were being dismantled of their blue and crimson and yellow draperies, the decorations were being torn from the walls, and cloaks and boxes routed out from under the tables. The receivers of money were busily counting up the piles of silver. A few children ran up and down at the end of the room, on the smooth floor, unchecked, and a small boy lay asleep on a bench, while his mother lamented her husband’s prolonged absence to everyone who passed. Each minute the crowd in the room thinned out more and more, going out by twos and threes and fours, leaving fewer couples on the floor and a scattered line of chaperons against the wall. But the dancers who were left clung to their privilege. As the clock struck twelve, and the musicians got up to leave, a cry of protest arose: “One more waltz—just one more! This is the best part of the evening. Lawson—Lawson Barr, give us a waltz! Ah, no, don’t say you’re too tired—play!” Young Billy Snow stood with his arm half withdrawn from Dosia’s waist, looking questioningly down at her. “I think I’d better go,” she murmured uncertainly, loath to depart, yet with a glance toward Lois, who, with Justin now standing beside her, was plainly expectant of departure. Lois had had no dancing—yet she was young, too. But at that moment the music struck up again—there was a crash of chords, and then a strain, wildly sweet, to which Dosia found herself gliding into motion ere she was aware. She knew before she looked that Lawson Barr was at the piano. His intent face, bent upon the keys, seemed remote and sad. The big room was nearly empty. One of the high windows had been opened for air, revealing the shining of the stars far up above in the bluish-black sky; below it a heap of tall white chrysanthemums stood massed to be taken away. There were barely a dozen couples on the polished floor. These had caught the white fire of a dance played as Dosia had never heard one played before; there was a wild swing to it that got into the blood and made the pulses leap in unison. The dancers flew by on swift and swifter feet, with paling cheeks and gleaming eyes. Dosia was dancing with Billy Snow, it was his arm around her on which she leaned, but to her intense imagining it was with Lawson Barr that she whirled, with closed eyes, on a rushing and delicious air that swept them past the tinkling shivers of icy falls into a white, white garden of moon-flowers, with the silver stars above. From the flowers to the stars she swung in that long, entrancing strain—from the flowers to the stars! From the stars—ah, whither went that flight of ecstasy—this endless, undulating, dreaming whirl? Down to the flowers again now—back to the stars; beyond, beyond—oh, whither?