“No,” said Virginia, “he shan’t! If he did, it would make no difference. Fanchon, I want you to leave this place and come with me. Let me take care of you. You’re too ill to stand up.”
“To stand up? Why, I’m going to dance for the pictures. You call me ill? I can dance. Attendez!”
She let go of the chair to which she had been clinging, and seemed to listen, her head bent and her brown eyes brilliant, her whole small figure quivering and tense.
“Mon Dieu—I hear it—the music!”
She swayed slightly, and then softly, easily, she began to dance. She danced wonderfully, keeping time to the music that she seemed to hear, swaying with it, stepping back and forth, weaving a dance so strange, so weird, so silent, that Virginia could not move. She stood rooted to the spot, watching, fascinated—watching the white face and the wild hair, the half-bare shoulders and the slender lifted arms.
Fanchon clasped her hands behind her head, twisting her slender body this way and that. Her small bare feet flashed back and forth, soft and silent and incredibly swift. She danced across the room, back and forth, to and fro, and Virginia watched her. Never in her life had she seen such dancing, never in her life had she seen such a wretched, quivering, tear-stained face. She thought it would have touched a heart of stone.
At last she could endure it no longer; it seemed to her like the dance of death.
“Stop!” she cried. “Oh, Fanchon, stop!”
Virginia’s voice, the sharp sound of her own name, broke the spell. Fanchon turned her head and looked at her. Something seemed to snap in her brain; her eyes clouded, she reeled, and, stretching out groping hands, she staggered blindly and would have fallen had not the other girl caught her. Virginia held her by main force, almost lifting her in her strong young arms, for suddenly all the life and motion had left the small wasted figure, and Fanchon lay white and senseless against her breast.
Ten minutes later Virginia came out of Fanchon’s room and closed the door behind her. She was very pale, but her eyes shone. She ignored the patient Bernstein and spoke directly to the woman.