Alone at the Dance Until Russell — Alice Adams

The empty-chair trick lasts ten or fifteen minutes and cannot safely be repeated, so Alice counts the young men lounging in the doorways and hates every one of them. Ella Dowling sits through dance after dance like a painted wooden figure, but Ella has her mother beside her and the excuse of being a spectator. For a girl who has been a belle it is worse. Why had she thought this time might be different? Why had she broken her back for those violets? When a man finally crosses to her, it is Harvey Malone, glossy and easy, who calls her 'Lady Alicia', drops into her absent partner's chair, and promises, as he has before, that he really is going to call on her some evening.

Alice retreats to the dressing-room and fusses with a slipper buckle until the attendant kindly sews it fast, which leaves her nothing to do but go. She asks the man at the cloak-room door to find her brother. Once she has gone he bursts out laughing, because Walter is behind the coats on his knees, shooting dice with the attendants. Alice takes refuge among the mothers and talks brightly to Mrs. George Dresser, who answers with dry nods. Frank Dowling dances with her again, and another girl's diamond pin tears the back of her dress.

Then Mildred brings Arthur Russell to her. Alice takes it as charity: a young hostess makes her fiancé dance with the unpopular girls. He is friendly and says 'That's splendid!' after the music, and she supposes he said the same to Ella. She sends him back to Mildred, but first asks him to find Walter. Mrs. Dresser moves away to sit with Mrs. Palmer, and Alice is left against the wall between empty chairs. Russell does bring Walter, who is furious: that man asked everyone in the house whether he was Mr. Walter Adams, and found him at the dice. At home her mother asks if she had a good time. 'Just lovely!' Alice says, and hums a dance tune on the stairs. At her bedroom door she throws herself into her mother's arms, sobbing so loudly that her father wakes.