As she swayed about, listless, apparently indifferent to any effect she might be producing, Hanson had a full opportunity to study her, and, in that concentrated attention, the man and the manager were fused. He was at once the cynical showman discounting every> favorable impression and the most critical and disillusioned of audiences.
In this dancer he saw a woman who was like the desert willow and younger than he had supposed; straight and supple, with a body of such plasticity, such instant response to the directing will of its possessor as only comes from the constant and arduous exercises begun in early childhood.
"Been trained for it since she was born, almost," was Hanson's first unspoken comment.
She wore a soft, clinging frock of scarlet crêpe. It was short enough to display her ankles, slender for a dancer, and her arched feet in heelless black slippers. In contrast to her red frock was a string of sparkling green stones which fell low on her breast. Her long, brown fingers blazed with rings, and in her ears, swinging against her olive cheeks, were great hoops of dull gold. Her black shining hair was gathered low on her neck, her unsmiling lips were scarlet as a pomegranate flower, and exquisitely cut; and the fainter, duskier pomegranate bloom on her oval cheeks faded into delicate stains like pale coffee beneath her long, narrow eyes.
"She ain't done a thing yet; she ain't even showed whether she can dance a few bars or not, but, Lord! how she has got over!" was Hanson's unspoken comment. "Clean to the back seats. There's nobody else here."
Although still aimlessly moving with the rhythm of the waltz she no longer merely followed the music. She and it were one now. And Hanson, a connoisseur, familiar with the best, at least in his part of the world, recognized the artist whose technique is so perfect that it is absorbed, assimilated and forgotten; but its essence remains, nevertheless, a sure foundation upon which to build securely future combinations and improvisations.
The Black Pearl was generous to-night. She was the program—its one feature. She gave the audience its money's worth, judged by their standards, which were measured by time; and yet, when she finished, she gave one no idea of having exhausted her repertoire. In fact, she could not have defined that repertoire. Dancing was her expression, and the Black Pearl was conscious of infinite and unsounded phases of self.
Most of the features of the program were familiar to Hanson by her reputation. They included some old Spanish dances, some gypsy ones and others manifestly her own. But dancer though she was by nature and training, her personality dominated and eclipsed her art.
Hanson was not imaginative, but as he watched her he seemed to be gazing at some gorgeous cactus blossom opening its scentless petals to the burning sun. Beneath and beyond her stretched the gray wastes of the desert turning to gold under her feet, but still untrammeled and merciless, holding strange secrets close to its savage heart; now, exerting all its magic of illusion in delicate and exquisite mirages, all of its luring fascination which has drawn men to it from the beginning of the world; and now revealing itself desolate and unashamed in all of its repulsive, stark aridity.
The Pearl certainly made no effort to attract. If a glance from those narrow eyes enthralled, it stung too. It was the flame of wine in the blood, the flick of a whip on the raw, which roused in a man's heart, in Hanson's at least, the passionate disposition to conquer and subdue.