The evening at last comes; the uninteresting square dances are gone through with, and the music of the waltz begins. Her partner is the Apollo of her day dreams. He presses her close to his breast, and they glide over the floor together as if the two were but one.
When she raises her eyes, timidly at first, to that handsome but deceitful face, now so close to her own, the look that is in his eyes as they meet hers, seems to burn into her very soul. A strange, sweet thrill shakes her very being and leaves her weak and powerless and obliged to depend for support upon the arm which is pressing her to himself in such a suggestive manner, but the sensation is a pleasant one and grows to be the very essence of her life.
If a partner fails, through ignorance or innocence, to arouse in her these feelings, she does not enjoy the dance, mentally styles him a "bore," and wastes no more waltzes on him. She grows more bold, and from being able to return shy glances at first, is soon able to meet more daring ones until, with heart beating against heart, hand clasped in hand, and eyes looking burning words which lips dare not speak, the waltz becomes one long, sweet and purely sensual pleasure.
The more profitable things upon which she has been accustomed to spend her time and thought, lose all attraction for her, and during the time which intervenes between dancing school evenings, she feeds her romantic passion on novels, unfit for any person to read, and which would have been without special interest to her before she entered the dancing school. She spends much thought upon those things which tend to develop her lower nature, for "as a man thinketh, so is he." She has never before had a thought she would not willingly express to her mother. But now she thinks of and discusses with her girl friends of the dancing school, subjects which she would shrink from mentioning to her mother.
O, foolish girl, if she had but remembered that her best friend was her mother, and that thoughts she could not express to her were thoughts in which she should never indulge, what untold sorrow and shame she might have been spared.
She graduates from the academy and is caught into the whirl of society, and her life becomes what is called one round of pleasure—one round certainly of parlor dances, social hops and grand balls with champaign dinners and early goings home (early in the morning, of course).
This evening there is to be a ball of unusual grandeur. The last of the season of gaiety, and the closing of the dancing-school term. Our friend will surely be present. Let us attend. What a scene of beauty, gayety and splendor. It must have been of just such scenes the poet wrote:
"There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium's capital had gathered then—
Her beauty and chivalry"—
But see, there is our friend of the dancing academy just entering on the arm of her devoted father. Three months have passed since we first met her. She is much changed, yet one can scarcely see in what the change consists. The face is the same, yet not the same. There is just the shadow of coarseness in it, a little less of frank innocence and true refinement, and a trace, not exactly of ill-health, but a want of freshness. This last is, however, well concealed by the use of cosmetics, and she is still a very beautiful girl, and the fond father's heart swells with pride as he sees the handsomest and most fashionable gentlemen of the ball-room press eagerly forward to ask her hand for the different dances of the evening.
Her father remains for a few of the square dances, but soon retires, knowing that his fair daughter will not want for attention from—gentlemen whose attentions he is sure must be desirable, certainly desirable, why not? Are these admirers not rich and handsome, and do they not move in the highest society. Ah, foolish father, how little he knows of the ways of ball-room society.