Upon this whirlpool John Egerton embarked with the gravest misgivings, especially as he was conscious of a strange Miss Atholl clinging to his person. Young George Tarrant had immediately plunged into the storm with her sister, and his fair head was to be seen far off, gleaming and motionless like a lighthouse above the tossing heads and undulant shoulders. Stephen had secured Muriel Tarrant, and poor John was very miserable. If he had been less shy, or more intimate with Miss Atholl, he might have comforted himself with the comedy of it all. And if he had been more ruthless he might have bent Miss Atholl to his will and declined to attempt anything but his own primitive two-step. But he became solemn and panic-stricken, and surrendered his hegemony to her, suffering her to give him intricate advice in a language which was meaningless to him, and to direct him with ineffectual tugs and pushes which only made his bewilderment worse. The noise was deafening, the atmosphere stifling, the floor incredibly slippery. The four black men were now all shouting at once, and playing all their instruments at once, working up to the inconceivable uproar of the finale, and all the dancers began to dance with a last desperate fury and velocity.