For just an instant his gaze seemed to linger upon Elza; then he gravely replaced his red mask. Applause swept the room; the music started again. The lights overhead began whirling their kaleidoscope of colors down upon the dancers.
We took our places in a canopied enclosure upon the first balcony, some twenty feet above the dance floor. Tarrano refused the cushions; he placed Elza deferentially upon them, and spread food and drink and sweet-meats before her. Near them sat Georg and Maida. I would have sat between Elza and Georg, but Tarrano pulled me away from them.
"You are wanted below." He said it very softly, for my ears alone; but through his mask I could see his eyes blazing at me.
"They are diving into the pool outside—cannot you hear them, Jac Hallen?" Impatience came to his voice; in truth, I must have been staring at him witless. "Maidens out there, Jac Hallen, who are seeking handsome youths like yourself for escort. Must I speak plainly? You are not wanted here. Go!"
"I——"
"Another word will be your last." His voice was still almost emotionless, but I did not miss the gesture of his hand to his belt. "You had best obey, Jac Hallen."
I was hardly so witless as not to realize the truth of his admonition. I turned away; and with all the laughter and movement around us, I think that Georg, Maida and Elza did not see me go.
For the space of an hour or more, I stood alone on the lower floor of the pavilion, watching the balcony where Tarrano and the others sat. Stood there alone, feeling helpless and with my heart heavy with foreboding. Beneath my grey robe I was dressed in holiday fashion of the Great City—beribboned and gartered, with feathers at my scarlet shoulders for all the world like a male nada.[20] My red mask I kept on, and folded my cloak around me.
The dance floor was crowded. I saw now that it was cut into small circles marked with black—circles in diameter about the length of a man. At intervals—perhaps five minutes apart—a signal in the music caused each of the dancing couples to select a circle and to dance wholly within it. And then one of the circles, by mechanical device, was raised into the air above all the others. The couple on it, thus prominent, danced at their best, to be judged by Tarrano for a prize.
For an hour I stood there. I could see Elza plainly. She had removed her mask. Her face was flushed, her lips laughing. Once, in a chance silence, her shout of applause rang out. The quality of abandonment in it turned me cold. Did I see Tarrano's hand move back to his belt? Was he intoxicating her? Then I saw Maida make a gesture—wave something from beneath her cloak at Elza. A scent to sober her? It seemed so, for Elza looked confused; and I saw Maida flash her a look of warning.