A few evenings later Keith was dining with the Norman Wentworths, and after dinner Norman said:
"By the way, we are going to a ball to-night. Won't you come along? It will really be worth seeing."
Keith, having no engagement, was about to accept, but he was aware that Mrs. Wentworth, at her husband's words, had turned and given him a quick look of scrutiny, that swept him from the top of his head to the toe of his boot.
He had had that swift glance of inspection sweep him up and down many times of late, in business offices. The look, however, appeared to satisfy his hostess; for after a bare pause she seconded her husband's invitation.
That pause had given Keith time to reflect, and he declined to go. But Norman, too, had seen the glance his wife had given, and he urged his acceptance so warmly and with such real sincerity that finally Keith yielded.
"This is not one of _the_ balls," said Norman, laughingly. "It is only _a_ ball, one of our subscription dances, so you need have no scruples about going along."
"Mrs. Creamer's balls are _the_ balls, my dear fellow. There, in general, only the rich and the noble enter--rich in prospect and noble in title--"
"Norman, how can you talk so!" exclaimed Mrs. Wentworth, with some impatience. "You know better than that. Mrs. Creamer has always been particularly kind to us. Why, she asks me to receive with her every winter."
But Norman was in a bantering mood. "Am not I rich and you noble?" he laughed. "Do you suppose, my dear, that Mrs. Creamer would ask you to receive with her if we lived two or three squares off Fifth Avenue? It is as hard for a poor man to enter Mrs. Creamer's house as for a camel to pass through the needle's eye. Her motions are sidereal and her orbit is as regulated as that of a planet."
"Why, she has all sorts of people at her house--!"
"Except the unsuccessful. Even planets have a little eccentricity of orbit."
An hour or two later Keith found himself in such a scene of radiance as he had never witnessed before in all his life. Though, as Norman had said, it was not one of the great balls, to be present at it was in some sort a proof of one's social position and possibly of one's pecuniary condition.
Keith was conscious of that same feeling of novelty and exhilaration that had come over him when he first arrived in the city. It came upon him when he first stepped from the cool outer air into the warm atmosphere of the brilliantly lighted building and stood among the young men, all perfectly dressed and appointed, and almost as similar as the checks they were receiving from the busy servants in the cloak-room. The feeling grew stronger as he mounted the wide marble stairway to the broad landing, which was a bower of palms and flowers, with handsome women passing in and out like birds in gorgeous plumage, and gay voices sounding in his ears. It swept over him like a flood when he entered the spacious ball-room and gazed upon the dazzling scene before him.