She had flung her arms forward, so near that they almost touched him. He could have sworn that her lips had called his name. He felt himself bewitched, filled with an insane longing to throw out his arms in response to her passionate, unspoken invitation, in obedience to the clamoring of his seething senses. He had forgotten, even, that any one else was in the room.
Then, suddenly, the music stopped. The lights flared out from the ceiling and from every corner of the apartment. Slender and erect, her arms hanging limply at her sides, without a touch of color in her cheeks or a coil of her black hair disarranged, without a sign of heat or disturbance or passion in her face, John found Aida Calavera standing within a few feet of him, her eyes seeking for his. She laid her fingers upon his arm. The room was ringing with shouts of applause, in which John unconsciously joined. Every one was trying to press forward toward her. With her left hand she waved them back.
"If I have pleased you," she said, "I am so glad! I go now to rest for a little time."
She tightened her clasp upon her companion's arm, and they passed out of the picture-gallery and down a long corridor. John felt as if he were walking in a dream. Volition seemed to have left him. He only knew that the still, white hand upon his arm seemed like a vise burning into his flesh.
She led him to the end of the corridor, through another door, into a small room furnished in plain but comfortable fashion.
"We will invade the prince's own sanctum," she murmured. "Before I dance, I drink nothing but water. Now I want some champagne. Will you fetch me some, and bring it to me yourself?"
She sank back upon a divan as she spoke. John turned to leave the room, but she called him back.
"Come here," she invited, "close to my side! I can wait for the champagne. Tell me, why you are so silent? And my dancing—that pleased you?"
He felt the words stick in his throat. The sight of her cold, alluring beauty, shining out of her eyes, proclaiming itself and her wishes from her parted lips, filled him with a sudden resentment. He hated himself for the tumult which raged within him, and her for having aroused it.
"Your dancing was indeed wonderful," he stammered.