John nodded.
"She's expected any moment. I wonder what she's like off the stage!"
"You wait and see," Lord Amerton sighed. "There isn't another woman in Europe to touch her. Why, they say that even our host is one of her victims. Like to be introduced to some of the girls, or shall we go and have a drink?"
John was hesitating when he felt a hand upon his shoulder. The prince's voice sounded in his ear.
"Strangewey," he said, "I am privileged to present you to Mme. Aida Calavera. Madame, this is the friend of whom I spoke to you."
John turned away from the little group of girls and young men toward whom Amerton had been leading him. Even though the prince's speech had given him a moment's breathing-space, he felt himself constrained to pause before he made his bow of ceremony.
The woman was different from anything he had imagined, from anything he had ever seen. In the ballet a writhing, sensuous figure with every gesture a note in the octave of passion, here she seemed the very personification of a negative and striking immobility. She was slender, not so tall as she had seemed upon the stage, dressed in white from head to foot. Her face was almost marblelike in its pallor, her smooth, black hair was drawn tightly over her ears, and her eyes were of the deepest shade of blue.
During that momentary pause, while he searched among a confused mixture of sensations for some formula of polite speech, John found time to liken her in his mind to something Egyptian. She raised her hand, as he bowed, with a gesture almost royal in its condescension. The prince, with quiet tact, bridged over the moment during which John struggled in vain for something to say.
"Mr. Strangewey," he remarked, "paid his first visit to Covent Garden to-night. He has seen his first ballet, as we moderns understand the term. I cannot help envying him that delight. He naturally finds it difficult to realize this additional good fortune. Will you excuse me for one moment?"
The prince departed to welcome some later arrivals. The noisy little group standing close at hand, from which John had been diverted, passed on into the refreshment-room, and the two were, for a few moments, almost isolated.