This lasted an hour. He watched her, enchanted, proud, thinking of nothing but her, and he felt his heart leap and quiver in his breast at every touch upon the tambourine.
But one would have said that she had drawn about herself a circle that he could not cross. He waited until the circle should be broken. He was like one of the great dogs trained to guard droves of bulls; that are so fearless of blows from the horns of their charges, but sit obediently by watching their master at his meals, waiting for the crumb he tosses them, slaves of the king, of their god, who is man.
She had now the effect upon him of a genuine queen, a queen in some fairy tale, with her studied attitudes accompanied by the monotonous music, which was accentuated by the ceaseless motion of the sequins of her crown of copper against her swarthy brow and the dead black of her hair.
Suddenly she laid her tambourine aside. He started toward her. She held him back with a stern glance, and snatching away the silk handkerchief that covered her shoulders, appeared before him in a rich waist of many colors; and he saw upon her breast necklaces of gold pieces—her fortune.
“Await my pleasure,” said she. “Leave me in peace a moment.”
She covered her head with the ample handkerchief she had taken off and remained hidden behind that veil for a moment. Renaud heard her muttering unfamiliar words—mormô, gorgô—words of sorcery, without doubt.
When she threw back her veil, she was laughing.
What vision had the sorceress evoked? what had the seer seen?
“It will be better than I hoped!” said she. “Now, look!”
She rose, and to the accompaniment of the jangling of the sequins in her diadem and the gold pieces of her necklace, set in motion by her slow dance, in the course of which she did not move from where she stood, she removed her garments, one by one.