They entered a big room full of people, apparently doing nothing.  From the opposite side, where the dance-hall opened, came a hum that seemed at once music and discordance, gaiety and wildness, with a strange, carrying undertone raw and violent.

Hough led Neale across the room to where he could look into the dance-hall.

Neale saw a mad, colorful flash and whirl of dancers.

Hough whispered in Neale’s ear:  “Stanton throws the drunks out of here.”

No, it appeared the dancers were not drunk with liquor.  But there was evidence of other drunkenness than that of the bottle.  The floor was crowded.  Looking at the mass, Neale could only see whirling, heated faces, white, clinging arms, forms swaying round and round, a wild rhythm without grace, a dance in which music played no real part, where men and women were lost.  Neale had never seen a sight like that.  He was stunned.  There were no souls here.  Only beasts of men, and women for whom there was no name.  If death stalked in that camp, as Hough had intimated, and hell was there, then the two could not meet too soon.

If the mass and the spirit and the sense of the scene dismayed Neale, the living beings, the creatures, the women—­for the men were beyond him—­confounded him with pity, consternation, and stinging regret.  He had loved two women—­his mother and Allie—­so well that he ought to love all women because they were of the same sex.  Yet how impossible!  Had these creatures any sex?  Yet they were—­at least many were—­young, gay, pretty, wild, full of life.  They had swift suppleness, smiles, flashing eyes, a look at once intent and yet vacant.  But few onlookers would have noticed that.  The eyes for which the dance was meant saw the mad whirl, the bare flesh, the brazen glances, the close embrace.

The music ended, the dancers stopped, the shuffling ceased.  There were no seats unoccupied, so the dancers walked around or formed in groups.

“Well, I see Ruby has spotted you,” observed Hough.

Neale did not gather exactly what the gambler meant, yet he associated the remark with a girl dressed in red who had paused at the door with others and looked directly at Neale.  At that moment some one engaged Hough’s attention.

The girl would have been striking in any company.  Neale thought her neither beautiful nor pretty, but he kept on looking.  Her arms were bare, her dress cut very low.  Her face offered vivid contrast to the carmine on her lips.  It was a round, soft face, with narrow eyes, dark, seductive, bold.  She tilted her head to one side and suddenly smiled at Neale.  It startled him.  It was a smile with the shock of a bullet.  It held Neale, so that when she crossed to him he could not move.  He felt rather than saw Hough return to his side.  The girl took hold of the lapels of Neale’s coat.  She looked up.  Her eyes were dark, with what seemed red shadows deep in them.  She had white teeth.  The carmined lips curled in a smile—­a smile, impossible to believe, of youth and sweetness, that disclosed a dimple in her cheek.  She was pretty.  She was holding him, pulling him a little toward her.