The Ballerina's final pose was being sustained amid loud applause. The ballet-master began to count the steps for the final movement. The stage manager's warning had sounded. The curtain fell, and eighty girls hurried helter-skelter to their rooms in order to change for the last scene.
"All down, ladies," cried the call-boy, and downstairs they trooped.
The curtain rose on Piccadilly Circus, gray and dripping. Somber figures danced in a saraband of shadows to a yearning melody of Tschaikovsky. The oboe gave its plaintive summons; like sea-birds calling, the rest of the wood-wind took up the appeal until it died away in a solitary flute, which sounded a joyful signal very sweet and low. A cymbal crashed: a golden ray of light came slanting on to the stone figure of Cupid, infusing him with life until, warm and radiant, he sprang from his pedestal to bewitch the sad scene. Roses tumbled from the clouds; lilies sprang up, quivering in the wind of dancing motion. A fountain gushed from the abandoned pedestal; the scene was a furnace of color. The Ballerinas led the Corps de Ballet in a Bacchic procession round and round the twirling form of Cupid. With noise of bell and cymbal, they ran leaping through an enchanted Piccadilly seen in amber or cornelian. They might have stepped from a canvas of Titian dyed by the sun of a spent Venetian afternoon. Individual members of the audience began to applaud, and the isolated hand-claps sounded like castanets, until, as the dance became wilder, cheers floated on to the stage like the noise of waves heard suddenly over the brow of a hill.
Jenny, in a tunic of ivory silk sprayed with tawny roses, her hair bound with a fillet of gold, turned from the intoxication of the dance to search the stalls. Across the arpeggios of the misted violins, his eyes burned a path. Yet, although she knew that he asked for a signal to show her consciousness of him, she could not give one. Had his glances seemed less important, she would have smiled; but since for the first time in her life a man stirred her, bashfulness caught her icily and, while her heart flamed, her eyes were cold. The curtain fell, rising again at once to let the bouquets fall softly round the silver shoes of the Ballerinas. The odor of stephanotis, mingled with the sharper perfume of carnations, seemed almost visible. The emotion of the audience struck the emotion of the dancers and kindled a triumph. The man in the stalls leaned forward, and the intensity of his gaze was to Jenny as real an offering as a bouquet. The curtain fell for the last time and as it touched the stage, instead of hurrying to her dressing-room, she stood a moment staring at what, for the first time, seemed an agent of deprivation not relief. Suddenly, too, she realized that she was very lightly clothed, and, as she walked slowly up the stone stairs to the dressing-room, was not sure whether she was sorry or glad.
In the crowd of chatting girls, Jenny began to call herself a fool, to rail at her weakness, and to ascribe the whole experience to the extra Guinness of a first night. Yet all the time she wondered if he would be waiting at the end of the court; there had been no wave of hand or flutter of a programme to confirm the hopes of imagination. Moreover, what was he really like? Outside he would be "awful," like the rest of them. Outside he would smirk and betray his sense of ownership. Outside he would destroy the magic that had waked her at last from the dull sleep of ordinary life. She began to hurry feverishly her undressing, and the more she hurried, the more she dreamed. At last, having, as it seemed, exhausted herself with speed, she sat down on the bench, and, looking round, perceived that the other girls were well in front of her. She lost confidence and wished for support in the adventure.
"Coming out to-night?" she asked Irene.
"If you like," said the latter.
Jenny, although she longed to be out of the theater, could not be quick that night. As she watched the other girls leave the dressing-room, she asked herself why she had wanted Irene to wait for her. If he were outside, Irene would spoil it all; for, together, they would giggle, and he would think what a shocking couple of girls he had fallen in with. She wished now that Irene would become impatient and go, but the latter seemed perfectly willing to dawdle, though by now they were the only two inhabitants of the dressing-room.
"Oh, do move yourself!"
"Oh, I can't, Irene. Whoever made these unnatural stays?"