t eleven o’clock the ballroom was crowded. Elsa Utterbourne, in a handsome, severe, somehow almost boyish gown, was the centre of interest, and about her revolved giddily the A established dances of the year—a year when all that was most outré was also most popular.  
Young interests and enthusiasms and hopes and despairs and infatuations and intrigues merged and were stirred into a gay musical shuffle. All the season’s debutantes were there and a great many of last season’s debutantes; all the important marriageable young ladies, in fact, and a few of the important unmarriageable older young ladies, and a great many young married folks, with their air of unimpeachable savoir-faire and often an inclination to be as scandalous as possible without quite incurring the frown of the community; even a sprinkling of blithe young divorcées, since connubial life can’t be expected to be a grand sweet song in every single instance, and how can you always tell until you’ve tried it whether married life with one mate will prove as nice as married life with another mate—or in extreme cases, a state of unmarried life with somebody else’s? In a word, the dance was an entire success.
 
Captain Utterbourne, looking immensely civilized and wholly unnautical, sat all in a sort of cynical little slump on a davenport, his hands lightly thrust into his pockets—a rather short, stockily built man with somewhat thick neck and wrists, and a round full face. His eyes were middling small under a sloping brow, while the nose was inclined to be outstanding.
 
Having observed Elsa one is equipped in really superlative degree to graduate to the Captain; for if ever there was a logic in relationship, it demonstrated itself here! If Elsa’s eyes were unassailable, the Captain’s whole face was unassailable. In fact he possessed what is commonly known as a poker face—inscrutable, always superbly clean shav............