. . . "The Waltz" . . . is ostensibly about the luckless narrator's denigration of her dancing partner, blaming him for her own failure to attract a suitable mate. The story of self-admonition also brings self-condemnation. Thus the outer voicings work dialogically with the interior thought, the bifocalism of her hypocrisy tellingly demonstrating the slow submergence of her individual will into the will of social custom, her interior defeat dictated by her need for public success. It results, ironically, in public exposure.