Neale slowly
worked his way around. At the end of the big tent a wide door opened
into another big room--a dance-hall, full of dancers.
Neale had seen nothing like this in the other construction camps.
A ball was in progress. Just now it was merry, excited, lively.
Neale got inside and behind the row of crowded benches; he stood up
against a post to watch. Probably two-hundred people were in the
hall, most of them sitting. How singular, it struck Neale, to see
good-looking, bare-armed and bare-necked young women dancing there,
and dancing well! There were other women--painted, hollow-eyed--sad
wrecks of womanhood. The male dancers were young men, as years
counted, mostly unfamiliar with the rhythmic motion of feet to a
tune, and they bore the rough stamp of soldiers and laborers. But
there were others, as there had been before the bar, who wore their
clothes differently, who had a different poise and swing--young men,
like Neale, whose earlier years had known some of the graces of
society. They did not belong there; the young women did not belong
there. The place seemed unreal. This was a merry scene, apparently
with little sign, at that moment, of what it actually meant. Neale
sensed its undercurrent.
He left the dance-hall. Of the gambling games, he liked best both to
watch and to play poker.
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