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ishly. "When I step back you step forward so we'll stay together."

But Abner lacked that physical sympathy with Beatrice which takes the place of finish with the ordinary run of dancers. He could never dance with Beatrice Belle, he could only practise dancing.

"You'll make a pretty out over at Adelaide's next week," she would sniff.

"I thought Adelaide's party was a social?"

"We call it a social so people won't know, but it's a dance. She's goin' to have a nigger band from Columbia."

"I'll come out all right."

But Abner did not feel the confidence in his words. He had the hill fear of making himself ridiculous.

Once during such practising, Adelaide came to the Sandage home. She stood in the hallway and clapped her hands.

"I bid for the next dance, Valentino," she cried, and burst out laughing so immoderately that Abner stopped with a reddened face int he midst of a braying passage from the phonograph.

"Oh, go on, go on!" she insisted.

"No, you an' Beatrice Belle can dance if you want to."

"Now don't get peeved; everybody has to learn; why don't you let yourself go? Watch me and Beatrice."

She spread out her arms, floated over to Beatrice in rhythm to the interrupted strain, then entwined herself in her companion's clasp, and struck into a florid step, whirling herself this way and that, flinging her torso over Beatrice's arm. Then she floated away from her partner until only their fingertips were engaged; closed again and came to a gay halt, leaning backward with her head down laughing at Abner with an inverted face.

"That's the way you do it," she cried, twisting herself lithely upright again. "Just imagine there's not a bone in your body, that you're a flame blowing in the wind."

"Why, Adelaide, I didn't know you could do that!" cried Beatrice in astonishment.