“She did not understand and could not understand that it was on account of her success.”
Photo Lafitte
THE DANCE OF FIRE
Gab’s mother, after acknowledging the manager’s salutation as he said good-bye, again asked the ticket office men:
“She is a proper person, then?”
“Good Heavens, yes. She is so middle class that she looks like a little country girl. I suspect that she has never dreamed of trying to be swell. She came here with a valise and a little steamer trunk, and dressed as in this photograph,” he added, showing the portrait I had given him.
This photograph depicted me in a yachting cap, a straight-cut dress of indefinite colour, and supported by straps. A light underwaist, a short jacket and a very simple cape completed my costume.
After seeing this Gab and her mother went home with their seats for next day’s matinee. This matinee impressed Gab to such a degree that on reaching home this child of fourteen wrote the following lines in my honour:
“A luminous and impalpable shadow. Across the dark brown night flits a pallid, palpitating reflection. And while petals fly in the air a supernatural golden flower rises toward the sky. It is not a sister of the terrestrial flowers which shed their dream particles upon our aching souls. Like them the gigantic flower brings no consolation. It grew in a strange region under the moon’s blue rays. Life beats in its transparent stem, and its clear leaves hang loosely in the shade like great tormented arms. Just a dream efflorescence displays itself and meditates. It is the flower’s living poetry that sings there, delicate, fugitive and mysterious.
“It is the unsullied firmament, bestrewn with stars and it is the dance of fire.