Glaucon interpreted her comment to apply to another woman, who at the moment seemed to have materialized out of the tangled lamp rays, and appeared upon the platform in the court. This airy being stood long enough to assure the spectators that she was of real flesh and blood. Then, with hands outspread, she pivoted herself upon the slender point of her foot, and gyrated with as little apparent muscular effort as that of the wand which a juggler twirls upon his finger. Two other women joined her. Together they writhed in the set forms of a dance, which was designed to show through thin drapery the fine contour of their persons, the proportion of their limbs, and grace of motion.
"Bravo!" cried Menelaos, tossing a handful of gold coins. As they rang upon the pavement, the dancers, without stopping or marring their orderly movements, picked up the gleaming spots.
"Bravo!" echoed Glaucon. "I have never seen it better done. I remember the same figures executed by the famous Thessalian sisters at Antioch. You recall the dance, do you not?"
"I am not sufficiently versed in the art to recognize the movements," replied the Priest.
"The wine will clear your wits," responded Glaucon, nodding to the Princess for approval, which was so sweetly given that it proved sufficient intoxicant to the Jew without need of any from the cup. He clapped his hands, signalling to the servants, who filled the great goblet.
"This wine," said Glaucon, "I had sent from the capital as a gift to our fair hostess. Let her first spice it with a touch of her lips."
The Princess acknowledged the excellence of Glaucon's choice by quaffing deeply, and then passed the golden vessel to her guests.
The girls again appeared, one carrying a cythera, another a tambour, the third castanets. The first sang, to the accompaniment of her instrument, a love song. Her voice had much natural sweetness, and gave evidence of cultivation; but the notes soon became husky and harsh, as if age-worn, although the singer could scarcely have passed her first score of years. It gave proof of the dissipation which soon ends the career of women of her class, unless they are possessed of sufficient ambition and will to practise a measure of present self-restraint for the sake of longer future indulgence. The two other girls joined in the chorus with tambour and castanets, and afterwards executed a dance which was pantomimic of the song.
Was it the gold that excited them, or is there a spirit of the dance which resides somewhere in the air or in the light, and enters the bodies of its votaries? These women became ecstatic; they seemed to emerge from themselves, and to become each a living presence of Terpsichore. They closed their eyes as if they danced in sleep. Their lips were parted to inhale the intoxicating breath of their goddess, who should thus supply the energy which physical motion exhausted. The timing of their feet became as pulse-beats, rhythmic, strong, flinging them through the forms of the dance, as a fever throb whirls one through the maze of fantastic visions. They bent until their dishevelled hair touched the floor, like stalks of grain beneath the weight of golden tassels. Then, as the wind lifts the stalk and flings high its bannered top, the women became erect. With instruments above their heads, they swirled, each like a glistening whirlpool, until the spectators were dizzied.
During the performance Helena had spiced the wine more than once with her lips as she passed the cup to Glaucon.