“It goes to the spot. Let's go inside. What's the play?”
He turned at once toward the main entrance of the theatre.
“A farce called 'Three Cheers and a Tiger,'—a Hoyt sort of a piece. The little Tyrrell is doing her tambourine dance to the music.”
“Never heard of the lady,” he said to me. And then to the youth on the other side of the box-office window, “Have you any seats left in the front row?”
Folsom always asked for seats in the front row. This time it was fatal. As we walked up the aisle, Folsom ahead, the little Tyrrell shot one casual glance of her gray eyes at him, as almost any dancer would have done at a front row newcomer entering while she was on the stage. In the next instant her eyes were following her toe in its swift flight upward to the centre of the tambourine that her hand brought downward to meet it. But the one glance across the footlights had been productive. Folsom sat staring over the heads of the musicians, his gaze fastened upon the little Tyrrell, who was leaping about on the stage to the tune of “La Gitana.” His lips opened slightly and remained so. His eyes feasted upon the flying dancer in the rippling blond wig, his ears drank in the buoyant notes.
It is well known that power lies in a saltatorial ensemble of white lace skirts, pale blue hose, lustrous naked arms, undulating bodice, magnetic eyes, flying hair, and an unchanging smile, to focus the perceptions of a man, to absorb his consciousness, aided by a tune which seems to close out from him all the rest of the world.
And there, while this plump little girl danced and the frivolous, stupid crowd looked eagerly on, from all parts of the overheated theatre, began the tragedy of Billy Folsom.
He gazed in rapture, and when she had finished and stood panting and kissing her hands in response to applause, he heaved an eloquent sigh.
“I'd like to meet that girl,” he whispered to me, assuming a tone of carelessness.
Thereafter he kept his eye fixed upon the wings until she reappeared. And the rest of the performance interested him only when she was in view.