The Golden House

"Why not?" said a wit. "The Duke of Donnycastle always shakes hands with the pugilists at a mill." "It is not so bad"-the speaker was a Washington beauty in an evening dress that she would have condemned as indecorous for the dancer it is not so bad as I-" "Expected?" asked her companion, a sedate man of thirty-five, with the cynical air of a student of life. "As I feared," she added, quickly. "I have always had a curiosity to know what these Oriental dances mean." "Oh, nothing in particular, now. This was an exhibition dance. Of course its origin, like all dancing, was religious. The fault I find with it is that it lacks seriousness, like the modern exhibition of the dancing dervishes for money." "Do you think, Mr. Mavick, that the decay of dancing is the reason our religion lacks seriousness? We are in Lent now, you know.