“The dance of the hours!  The dance of the hours!” echoed other voices, and glasses were drained wildly.  There was something exciting in the mere sound of the words that seemed to set brains jigging, and feet moving, and the world spinning and bowing.  For if Time itself danced, what could the most Puritan human being do but dance with it?  Seeing the crowd round Valentine, men who were drinking at the other end of the bar joined it, and the toast passed quickly from mouth to mouth.  Uttered by every variety of voice, with every variety of accent, it filled the stifling atmosphere, and tickled many an empty brain, like the catchword political that can set a nation behind one astute wire-puller.  Boys yelled it, men murmured it, and an elderly woman in a plush gown and yellow feathers screamed it out in a piercing soprano that would have put many a trumpet-blast to shame.  Glasses were emptied and filled again in its honour.  Yet nobody knew what it meant, and apparently nobody cared, except the Oxford boy who had already expressed his desire to be better informed on the subject.  He had gradually edged his way through the throng until he was close to Valentine, at whom he gazed with a sort of tipsy reverence.

“I say, you chap,” he cried.  “What are we drinking to—­eh?  What the devil’s the dance of the hours?”

Valentine brought his glass down on the counter.

“What is it?” he exclaimed.  “Why, the greatest dance in the world, the dance that youth sends out the invitations for, and women live for, and old men die with longing for.  We set the hours dancing in the night, we—­all who are gay and careless, who love life in the greatest way, and who laugh at death, and who aren’t afraid of the devil.  The devil’s only a bogey to frighten old women and children.  What do the hours care for him?  Not a snap.  It’s only cowards who fear him.  Brave men do what they will, and when the hours dance they dance with them, and drink with them all the night through.  Who says there’ll be another morning?  I don’t believe it.  Curse the sunshine.  Give me the night and the dancing hours!”

The youth gave a yell, which was echoed by some of his rowdy companions, and by the two little schoolboys who had joined the throng in a frenzy of childish excitement, which they thought manly.

“The dancing hours!  The dancing hours!” they cried, and one who was with a girl suddenly caught her round the waist and broke into wild steps.  Others joined in.  The confusion became tremendous.  Glasses were knocked over.  Whiskies and sodas were poured out in libations upon the carpet.  The protests of the barmaids were unheeded or unheard.  Julian whirled Cuckoo into the throng, and Valentine, snapping his long white fingers like castanets, stamped his feet as if to the measure of a wild music.  Against the wall some loungers looked on in contemptuous amusement, but by far the greater number of men present were young and eager for any absurdity, and not a