“You—you saw?” Her eyes were filled with wonder. “And you do not hate me?”
“I? Hate you? I am your sister of the stage. Your success is the success of all.”
Petite Jeanne’s mind whirled. Then her thoughts cleared. She stood up straight and strong. She planted one kiss on the cheek of Green Eyes, shed one hot tear, then she was gone.
A few moments later, in the hush of moonlight, with a great throng looking down upon them, she and Tico appeared upon the stage.
In this act, as the play runs, the dark-eyed rival of the girl portrayed by Jeanne discovers her father, a great French officer who has lived unknown to his daughter for years, only to find that he is dying.
The light-haired gypsy comes upon the scene to find the other girl in her dying father’s embrace, thus to learn that her hope of finding as a father some noble Frenchman is dashed to the ground.
Downhearted, despairing, her lover gone, hopes vanished, she remains with bowed head while the dying officer is carried away. Then, as her bear’s nose touches her hand, she remembers her art, the art of dancing. In this art she finds solace.
Moving gracefully into the dance, Petite Jeanne danced as she had never danced before. One pair of eyes in all that vast audience inspired her most. Gypsy eyes they were, the eyes of a stranger who had belonged to the camps of her enemy in France, but who, in a strange land, had become her friend. Florence and the strange gypsy had arrived in time.
The spell woven over the audience at that hour was sheer magic. The moonlight, the battlefield with its broken cannons; all this, with the bewitching dance of the tarantella, held the throng breathless, spellbound.
Then, at the dramatic moment, a soldier appeared. He was dressed in the uniform of a French poilu, but his face was the face of a gypsy.