At first she was a shadow among shadows. She seemed to hover on the verge of the light as a thought hovers on the verge of form. Then, without effort, seemingly without movement, so still and quiet did she hold her whole body, she glided out of the darkness, and, with her arms raised above her head, her face lifted to the flood of moonlight, she stood still, sur la pointe, poised in attitude of joyful waiting.
She wore the low bodice and short, full skirts of the old classic ballet. A slender wreath of laurel crowned the smooth, fair head. Though as yet she stood afar off from him, he knew that her eyes laughed, that her mouth was open in that wide, frank smile of happiness, that she was breathing deep with the foretaste of ecstasy. He knew, too, for what she waited—for the bar of music which should set her free.
It came at last. He heard it rush down through the stillness. It caught her up on its crest and swept her down the path of silver towards him. He knew it and recognized it. Its delirious beauty poured through his blood. And even if his instinct had not seized it she would have taught him. Her movements, her hands, her feet her body sang it to him.
She danced. Even in these moments when all clear thought was suspended he knew that this was something that his generation had never seen. It was the final word of a great art, often debased, now lifted to the heights where the soul pours through the body to triumphant expression.
She danced. Her shadow rose and fell upon the grey, time-defaced columns not more silently. There was no technical feat that she did not strike like a note of music in her passage, but the marvel of it was lost. As the daring flight of a gull, swooping from precipice to precipice, becomes a simple thing of ease and beauty, so her laughing, dangerous steps over the uneven flags seemed no more than an instinctive, effortless volition. As the brook leaps and sparkles over its rocky bed, now in sunlight, now in shadow, now rushing forward in headlong eagerness, now caught in a clear pool and held an instant in quivering suspense, so joyously and fearlessly she passed from the quick, brilliant passage of the waltz to its slower, deeper movement.
She danced. And it was a religion. Amongst the shades of departed worshippers she was the living spirit. She called them back from their dust-strewn oblivion to the rites of their mystic faith. She leapt the barriers of time and race. The ruined Hindu temple, its towering sikhara rising up over its holy mystery to the stars, identified itself with her; she became its priestess, it became her natural background, the splendid shrine of her genius.
She danced. As David danced before the Lord, so she offered up the incense of her art to whatever was divine in that crumbling monument to man's faith in God. Greater than prayer or praise was the joy of her body and the laughter of her face lifted to the moonlight.
She danced. She had the austerity of nature. Her appeal to the senses was the appeal of a flower, of a butterfly's wing, of a lark singing amidst the azure, of the forest and the mountain and the running water. It was the appeal by which the earth calls men back to their sonship and the knowledge of her divinity.
She danced. And to the man who watched her she was all things that he had ever loved, ever believed in, ever hoped for.
A cloud passed over the moon and threw the temple into obscurity. She was for the moment only the shadow of herself. It seemed to him that the music had broken off and that she too had faltered. Then, as the light came out from behind the drifting darkness, he saw her glide down the avenue of columns, on tip-toe, her arms raised, her small fair head thrown back as though she drank in the growing radiance.