“They don’t accept our classification blindly.  They do not acknowledge any inferiority; they think they are a great deal better than any but the best white people,” replied Miss Hohlfelder.  “And since they have been coming here, do you know,” she went on, “I hardly think of them as any different from other people.  I feel perfectly at home among them.”

“It is a great thing to have faith in one’s self,” he replied.  “It is a fine thing, too, to be able to enjoy the passing moment.  One of your greatest charms in my eyes, Clara, is that in your lighter moods you have this faculty.  You sing because you love to sing.  You find pleasure in dancing, even by way of work.  You feel the joie de vivre—­the joy of living.  You are not always so, but when you are so I think you most delightful.”

Miss Hohlfelder, upon entering the hall, spoke to the pianist and then exchanged a few words with various members of the class.  The pianist began to play a dreamy Strauss waltz.  When the dance was well under way Miss Hohlfelder left the hall again and stepped into the ladies’ dressing-room.  There was a woman seated quietly on a couch in a corner, her hands folded on her lap.

“Good-evening, Miss Hohlfelder.  You do not seem as bright as usual to-night.”

Miss Hohlfelder felt a sudden yearning for sympathy.  Perhaps it was the gentle tones of the greeting; perhaps the kindly expression of the soft though faded eyes that were scanning Miss Hohlfelder’s features.  The woman was of the indefinite age between forty and fifty.  There were lines on her face which, if due to years, might have carried her even past the half-century mark, but if caused by trouble or ill health might leave her somewhat below it.  She was quietly dressed in black, and wore her slightly wavy hair low over her ears, where it lay naturally in the ripples which some others of her sex so sedulously seek by art.  A little woman, of clear olive complexion and regular features, her face was almost a perfect oval, except as time had marred its outline.  She had been in the habit of coming to the class with some young women of the family she lived with, part boarder, part seamstress and friend of the family.  Sometimes, while waiting for her young charges, the music would jar her nerves, and she would seek the comparative quiet of the dressing-room.

“Oh, I ’m all right, Mrs. Harper,” replied the dancing-mistress, with a brave attempt at cheerfulness,—­“just a little tired, after a hard day’s work.”

She sat down on the couch by the elder woman’s side.  Mrs. Harper took her hand and stroked it gently, and Clara felt soothed and quieted by her touch.

“There are tears in your eyes and trouble in your face.  I know it, for I have shed the one and known the other.  Tell me, child, what ails you?  I am older than you, and perhaps I have learned some things in the hard school of life that may be of comfort or service to you.”