Paul moistened his lips.
And then, from the wings, into the blaze and noise, danced a swift figure. The girl was perhaps an Abyssinian with maybe French blood in her veins;—she was known at any rate to the crowd who cheered as one man and shouted her name. Regularly featured, superbly framed, her raven-black hair flowed loose about her, crowned with a scarlet flower. Her skirt was diaphanous and spangled; a sort of loose white scarf was held by a clasp between her breasts but floated in a cloud around her as she moved. Her shapely back bare, her curved and lithesome body firm, her twinkling little feet light, her colour too was at any rate white by comparison with the previous performers. The barbaric clamour of music died down. The three negro girls collapsed on one side. The audience subsided with tense expectancy. She danced in silence and alone.
She utterly held her audience. Born of mixed parentage, better not named, where, how, God knows, probably she was dirty, certainly she was as coarse, as savage, as animal, as she well could be. But she held her audience. She weaved a spell of romance, of poetry, of magic, there, in those garish lights and in that rough rude place. She was incarnate grace, and she was lovely, say what you would. Entreating, forbidding, abandoning, desiring, she was wild pagan love. The negresses, too, had danced a passion that had grown old, very, very old, a forced, a thought-out thing; she danced passion, but the passion of the Song of Songs, of Dionysus young in Attic fields, of youth itself. And as she finished, she disengaged her flower with a swift movement from her hair, and tossed it to—Paul.
He caught it instinctively. And then he realised that he had caught it. He held it in his fingers, felt its stem firm between them, and knew that he was himself and awake. He realised that he had been standing and that the four of them were in a prominent position. He realised, too, that he had been charmed against his will, caught away, and that his face had shown it; that she had seen it; that she had, in her wanton way, chosen him.... He uttered an exclamation and dropped the bloom.
"For God's sake, let's get out," said Jardine, somewhere. Lights swam before Paul. He heard dimly a burst of cheering, voices speaking in a moment of less noise, a little laughter, then more cheers. He stumbled among chairs. Perspiration stood on him so that he fumbled for his handkerchief to wipe his face. His brain cleared a little in doing so. He saw a bloated face that leered up from a table and realised that the man was speaking to him. With his hasty gesture of refusal, his brain cleared a little more, and he began to understand. He began to understand, above all, how and why he had liked the dance.
They were outside an infinity later and walking through the cool night. He glanced down, still rather stupidly, feeling his feet on sand, and saw that his shoes were covered with it, and the black turned-up ankles of his evening trousers. Looking ahead, he saw Jardine was on in front with Muriel. He turned his head to steal a glance at Ursula, and cried out on the instant.
"Ursula! You're wearing it!"
"Why not? You dropped it rather rudely."
He marvelled at her level voice. She was perfectly cool, he noticed, looking straight ahead in her direct way as they walked. And the flower was a trumpet-shaped hibiscus that burned in the opening of her evening frock even against the white skin of her neck. He suddenly understood his confused memories. They had laughed at him, and cheered her when she had picked it up.
"Give it me, Ursula!" he cried. "Throw it away! You can't wear it!"