even of friendliness--but stairways near ballrooms have more to answer
for than have moonlit lakes and mountain sunsets. Some day the laws
of glamour must be discovered, because they are so important that the
world would be wiser now if Sir Isaac Newton had been hit on the head,
not by an apple, but by a young lady.

Age, confused by its own long accumulation of follies, is
everlastingly inquiring, "What does she see in him?" as if young love
came about through thinking--or through conduct. Age wants to know:
"What on earth can they talk about?" as if talking had anything to do
with April rains! At seventy, one gets up in the morning, finds the
air sweet under a bright sun, feels lively; thinks, "I am hearty,
today," and plans to go for a drive. At eighteen, one goes to a
dance, sits with a stranger on a stairway, feels peculiar, thinks
nothing, and becomes incapable of any plan whatever. Miss Morgan and
George stayed where they were.

They had agreed to this in silence and without knowing it; certainly
without exchanging glances of intelligence--they had exchanged no
glances at all. Both sat staring vaguely out into the ballroom, and,
for a time, they did not speak. Over their heads the music reached a
climax of vivacity: drums, cymbals, triangle, and sleighbells,
beating, clashing, tinkling. Here and there were to be seen couples
so carried away that, ceasing to move at the decorous, even glide,
considered most knowing, they pranced and whirled through the throng,
from wall to wall, galloping bounteously in abandon. George suffered
a shock of vague surprise when he perceived that his aunt, Fanny
Minafer, was the lady-half of one of these wild couples.

Fanny Minafer, who rouged a little, was like fruit which in some