Slowly it rose, flashing a broad path of light across the lawn, reflected in the still little river. And when it was in the position properly arranged for it, some local Joshua—probably Corot Mandel—arrested its further motion, and it hung there, flooding the stage with a witching lustre.
All at once the stage swarmed with supple, glimmering 373 shapes: Oberon and Titania came flitting down through the trees; Puck, scintillating like a dragon-fly, dropped on the sward, seemingly out of nowhere.
It was a wonderfully beautiful ballet, with an unseen chorus singing from within the woods like a thousand seraphim.
As for the play itself, which began with the calm and silvered river suddenly swarming alive with water-nymphs, it had to do, spasmodically, with the love of the fairy crown-prince for the very attractive water-nymph, Ythali. This nimble lady, otherwise, was fiercely wooed by the King of the Mud-turtles, a most horrid and sprawling shape, but a clever foil—with his army of river-rats, minks and crabs—to the nymphs and wood fairies.
Also, the music was refreshingly charming, the singing excellent, and the story interesting enough to keep the audience amused until the end.
There was, of course, much moonlight dancing, much frolicking in the water, few clothes on the Broadway principals, fewer on the chorus, and apparently no scruples about discarding even these.
But the whole spectacle was so unreal, so spectral, that its shadowy beauty robbed it of offence.
That sort of thing had made Corot Mandel famous. He calculated to the width of a moonbeam just how far he could go. And he never went a hair’s breadth farther.
Thessalie looked on with flushed cheeks and parted lips, absorbed in it all with the savant eyes of a professional. She also had once coolly decided how far her beauty and talent and adolescent effrontery could carry her gay disdain of man. And she had flouted him with indifferent eyes and dainty nose uplifted—mocked him and his conventions, with a few roubles in her 374 dressing-room—slapped the collective face of his sex with her insolent loveliness, and careless smile.
Perhaps, as she sat there watching the fairy scene, she remembered her ostrich and the German Embassy, and the aged Von-der-Goltz Pasha, all over jewels and gold, peeping at her through thick spectacles under his red fez.