“They were lovely. You have done wonders with them.”
“Regular Isadora Duncan stuff,” sighed Peter Snipe, drawing lazily at his pipe. “Woodland nymphs, phantom pixies floating on the wind, zephyrs in the guise of fairies, dreams come true,—my dear Olga, you are a sorceress. You change clods into moonbeams, you turn human beings into vapours, you cast the mantle of enchantment over the midsummer night, and we see Oberon, Titania and all the rest of them disporting on the breeze. And to think that only this afternoon I saw all of those gawky girls working in the fields, their legs the colour of tan bark, with sandals that looked like canal-boats, skirts made of hemp,—just regular kids. And you transform them tonight into gleaming cloudlets to float upon the ambient atmosphere—”
“For heaven's sake, Pete, stop being an author and talk like a real man,” interrupted Fitts. “Can't you say, 'Gee, they was great, Olger'?”
It was “Twelfth Night,” and Olga's pupils had given a fairy dance on the Green. To conclude the almost mystic entertainment, the great Obosky herself had appeared in one of her most marvellous creations,—the “Dance of the Caliph's Dream,”—the sensational, never-to-be-forgotten dance that had been the talk of three continents. There was no spotlight to follow her sinuous, scantily clad figure as it spun and leaped and glided about the dim, starlit Green; there was no blare of brass and cymbals, nor the haunting wail of flageolets,—only the tinkle of mandolins and Spanish guitars to guide her bewildering feet,—and yet she had never been so alluring.
When it was all over,—when the charmed circle of faces had vanished into the byways of the night,—she came and flung herself down upon the steps of the Governor's mansion. She had wrapped her warm body in a sheath of yellow velvet; the tips of her bare feet were exposed to the grateful night air. Her uplifted eyes shone like the stars that looked down into them; her lips were parted in a smile; her flesh quivered with the physical ecstasy that comes only with supreme lassitude.
“You never danced so beautifully in your life, Olga,” said Careni-Amori. “And after two years, too. I cannot understand. I shall never sing again as I sang two years ago. But you,—ah, you dance even better. I take courage from you. Perhaps my voice has not gone to seed as Joseppi's has,—poor man. Not that it had very far to go,—but still it was second only to Caruso's, and that is something. How can it be that you improve with idleness, while I—while we go the other way?”
“I shall never dance like zat again,” replied Olga, her eyes clouding.
“You speak as if it were your swan dance,” cried Michael Malone.
“Oh, I shall dance for ever,” said she, “but never again like zat. You would ask why not. I cannot tell you. I do not know. Only can I say I shall never dance like zat again,—never.”
Ruth turned her head quickly to look at the woman beside her. Olga's face gleamed white in the starlight. Her eyes were still searching the speckled dome, and the smile had left her lips.