But the lessons were a decided success.
"You've a wonderful figure for dancing," the teacher said confidingly, "and a sense for rhythm that most of these women haven't any idea of." He smiled down at her and she fairly beamed.
"Oh, how nice!" sighed Ethel.

Something in the little look which flashed between them gave her a thrill of assurance.

And this feeling came again and again, in the shops and while she was seated at luncheon in some crowded restaurant, or on the streets or back at home, where even Joe was beginning to show his admiring surprise.
"You're making a fine little job of it," she heard him say to Amy one night.
She caught other remarks and glances from strangers, men and women.

And Ethel now began to feel the whole vast bustling ardent town centred on what in her high-school club, as they read Bernard Shaw, they had quite frankly and solemnly spoken of as "Sex." All the work and the business, the scheming and planning and rush for money, were focussed on this.
And for this she was attracting those swift admiring glances.

What she would be, what she wanted to be, what she now ardently longed to become, grew clearer to her day by day.