He stood alone on the edge of the whirling throng with a pleased, unconscious smile on his face, watching for the girl he had come to see, wondering if it would be all right if he asked her to dance. In the society he had hitherto frequented--or rather sampled, and found not altogether satisfactory--a fellow danced only with the girl he had taken with him, or perhaps, if it had been arranged beforehand, with the partner of some friend, who in turn danced with his partner. Here things seemed to be done differently. A line of young men hovered on the edge of the dancers, and every now and then one would swoop in amongst them and seize the lady of his choice away from her partner seemingly by main force, a sort of modern Rape of the Sabines. "Gee!" said Archibald to himself, watching. "Gee! But that takes a nerve." However, life on the whole does take a nerve, as he had long since discovered. He had, he supposed, as good a right to try it as the rest. The engraved card of invitation was in his pocket--nobody had taken it from him at the door. His broadcloth tails were as long and as neatly fitting as anybody's--the invitation having arrived at a fortunate time when the order he had landed in Philadelphia made it possible to buy himself a hitherto unnecessary dress suit. It is true that he had used up almost a box of lawn ties before he could get the proper touch to his bow, and even now the result should have proved indubitably that he was not a necktie drummer. He made a mental note to ask his friend Jakie Florsheimer of the Gents' Furnishing at Morehouse's what he could do to keep the blamed thing from riding up on him. Still, his final view of himself in the washstand mirror had not been discouraging. "Some boy," he had murmured to himself, in the absence of a less partial critic. So now he tensed the muscles of his jaw, and waited his chance, nervously. How wonderful they were, these slim, delicate creatures whirling by, with their white arms and backs, their tiny feet slippered in silver and gold, their soft laughter, their eager, luring eyes smiling over the shoulders of the fortunate youths who embraced them! Archibald grew quite dizzy with the scene, and stood at gaze as certain dazzled mariners may have gazed upon the Lorelei, to their undoing. "This is the life!" he said to himself, decidedly. There was not a pay dance-hall in town that could touch it.