Agamemnon murmured with enthusiasm:
"What a divinely pretty girl!"
Thanks to jostling by his companions he had reached a place in the front rank of spectators. The slender bronze body of the Nubian was only veiled round the hips by a light and transparent rose-coloured scarf. Her hair was wound on the top of her head in close fine curls, like those of Ethiopian women. Her face was of the severest Egyptian type, recalling that of the Sphinx.
She began to dance in careless fashion, as if already out-wearied. Above her head she swung heavy steel bells, castanets or "crotals,"—swung them lazily and loosely. But the movements became more emphatic, and suddenly under long lashes yellow eyes shone out, clear and bright as the eyes of a leopardess. She straightened her body. The steel crotals shook with such a challenge in their piercing sound that the crowd shivered and became still. The damsel whirled rapidly, vivid, slender, supple as a serpent; her nostrils dilated, a strange cry came crooning from her throat, and at each sharp movement her brown bosom shook and trembled within its almost invisible meshes of fine green silk.
The crowd howled with enthusiasm. Agamemnon struggled with rage because his companions held him back. Suddenly the girl stopped. A slight shudder ran through her body. Deep silence prevailed. The head of the Nubian was thrown back as if in a rigid swoon, but above it the crotals still shivered with an extraordinary languor, a dying vibration, quick and tender as the wing-flutterings of a captive butterfly. The flashing of the yellow eyes died away, although the eyeball kept its sparkling lights, and the face remained severe; but upon the dark and sensuous lips of that sphinx-like mouth a smile trembled, faint as the dying sound of the crotals.
The public shouted and applauded so loudly that the blue tent with its stars and spangles swayed like a sail in a hurricane. The showman became apprehensive lest his booth should collapse. The companions of Agamemnon at last failed to hold him back; raising the curtain, he rushed through the scenes into the part reserved for the dancers and actors. In vain his friends counselled—
"Wait; to-morrow you shall have everything as you wish! now something might...."
Agamemnon interrupted them—
"Not to-morrow; now, at once!"
He approached the owner of the show, the cunning and grey-bearded Greek, Mirmes, and without explanation flung into the skirt of his robe a handful of gold pieces.