Of Flamencine.'"
Then the music stopped, and with its silencing came the monk, the clown, the grandee, and others.
In the insistent demand of the many the Arab had too few dances with the Spanish girl. There were Comanches, Samurai, policemen, Zulus and courtiers, who, seeing her dance, discovered that their immediate avocation was dancing with her.
Yet it wanted an hour of unmasking time when a Bedouin led a gipsy maiden from Andalusia into the deserted library, where the darkness was broken only by blazing logs on an open hearth.
When they were alone he turned to her anxiously. His voice was freighted with appeal. Her face, now unmasked, wore an expression of stunned misery.
"Dear," he asked, "how are you?"
She gazed at the flickering logs. "I should think you would know," she answered wearily. Then, with a mirthless laugh, she spread both hands toward the blaze. "I'm looking ahead—I can see it all there in the fire." Her fingers convulsively clenched themselves until blue marks showed against the pink palms.
He pushed a chair forward for her, but with a shake of her head she declined it.
"Whoever heard of a gipsy girl sitting in a leather chair?" she demanded. "It's more like—like some effete princess."
She dropped to the Persian rug and, gathering her knees between her clasped hands, sat looking into the dying blaze. "For a few brief minutes I am the gipsy girl," she added.