The band began to play the concerto. More lights, multicolored lights, were turned upon the stage. The veils of the moon fluttered and Hermes de Bianca entered.
A long sigh came from the audience as he appeared and began to dance.
He wore a thin silk costume, mysterious and black, with flowing sleeves. He was fat, not grossly fat like a man, but rather the plump voluptuousness of an old belle; his skin shone white through the semi-transparent costume.
His hips were heavy and feminine. His hands and feet were tiny; he was very proud of them, for he gestured with his hands and pirouetted on the tips of his dainty feet. His breasts were the breasts of a woman.
Methodically he danced. With an obscene grace he moved about the stage, moved like a yielding woman exulting in her passivity.
His face:
There are the faces of men and there are the faces of women and there are also the faces of children, but this was yet another face.
The skin was smooth and silken-looking. The face was beautiful; his eyes were widened with paint and across the upper eyelids rows of shining, diamond-like stones were glued, making his slightest expression glitter in the light.
As he danced he would touch his hair from time to time, using the most common of feminine gestures. His hair was dark and oiled, with an artificial peak over the forehead. And, most striking of all, streaks of gray had been painted at the temples.
The music then became sad and, as it did, his dance became slower, more sensual. His wide painted mouth was never still, always working, always moist, the lips never without expression; now parted, showing desire, now petulant, now commanding, always enticing young men to love.