But just then Elizabeth would have signed away her whole life for nothing.
[17]
]CHAPTER II
On a brilliant night in January, 1920, under the sponsorship of Oswald Kane, Mme. Lisa Parsinova made her bow to an expectant New York public.
For a long time, almost a year to be exact, Mr. Kane had been letting fall gentle hints of his discovery of a rare Russian genius, driven by the war to these shores. He was having her instructed in English, the story went, and once equal to the exigencies of emotional acting in a strange tongue, she would be presented by him to an American public which could not fail to be entranced by her great art. All this had been revealed in various interviews, bit by bit—a word here, a phrase there, a subtle suggestion elsewhere. At first he had not given out her name, had been gradually prevailed upon to do so, and by the time he announced the date of her première
, “Mme. Lisa Parsinova” was on the lips of all that eager theater-going throng alert for a new sensation.
Stories of a cloudy past had already gone the rounds, vaguely suggested by Mr. Kane’s press representative, not through the medium of the press. There were tales of her startling beauty, her lovers, her temper. But so far no one had been permitted even a glimpse of her.
So that when she made her appearance the opening night, the gasp of thrilled admiration that met her was very genuine. The play was “The Temptress”—Oriental in atmosphere, written for her by Kane and a young collaborator whose name didn’t particularly matter. The [18] ]plot was not by any means unconventional, that of a slave of early Egypt wreaking revenge through the ages upon the descendants of the master, who, because she refused to yield to him, threw her to the crocodiles.
The first act, a prologue, took place on a flagged terrace of a palace by the slow-flowing Nile. As the curtain rose, faint zephyrs of incense wafted outward, a misty aroma. The terrace glistened under a golden moon with still stars piercing a sky of emerald. The tinkle of some far-off languorous instrument sounded soft against the night. And waiting, his lustful gaze on the marble steps, sat the master.
Slowly, the slave descended. Sullen and silent, she slunk forward, like some halting panther in the night.
Her body gleamed, golden as the moon, sinuous and satiny under the transparent cestus. Her bare feet moved noiselessly, every step one of infinite grace. She came forward, eyes brooding, and stood half shrinking, half defiant before the long stone bench where sat her master. Suddenly she raised her head, tossed back her short black hair and faced him.