“Why, yes, I thought she had something. A certain ... how shall I say ... banked fire?”
“I agree with Bob,” said Carla. “I don’t think she’s a savage; I don’t think she’s natural.”
“Just prejudice,” said Lewis lightly, gesturing with his hand. “Just prejudice; anyway, the girls here love her.” He pointed to a table of women. The dancer, wearing a dressing gown now, was sitting on the lap of one.
Holton chuckled.
“What amuses you?” asked Lewis but Holton wouldn’t answer him.
Carla told them of a dancer in Paris, like this dancer, and as she talked the lights went off in the room and the band began to play. Suddenly a spotlight was turned upon the stage and the room became quiet as the people waited to see the thing they had heard of, the thing they had come to see.
Softly the orchestra played.
A boy with blond curling hair and a smooth white face walked onto the stage, turned his back to the audience, and hung a round silver moon from a hook attached to the low ceiling. He stood back a moment, looking at the moon, and then, satisfied that it was right, he stepped off the small stage and sat down on a bench near the wings.
The silver moon shone dully, dominating the stage and the room. In the middle of the moon there was a mask: a painted mask, enticing, sexual, ambiguous, a youth or a woman. From this mask long veils of pink and blue silk quivered gently, stirred by the now-excited breathing of the audience. They watched this mask and, watching, waited for the dance to begin.
A voice came startlingly into the room from a loud-speaker. Said the voice: “We take great pride in introducing the star of our show, the one and only Hermes de Bianca. To the music of a Tschaikovsky concerto he will do a dance symbolic of the struggle between the material and the spiritual natures of man. Introducing MR HERMES DE BIANCA!”