“What of the gypsy who would steal your god if he might?” Florence had asked.
“Well, what of him?” Jeanne had demanded. “We haven’t seen him prowling about, have we? Given up, and gone south. That’s what I think. In New Orleans by this time.”
Long ere this, as you will recall, Jeanne had resolved what she should do on the opening night. When the curtain rose for her first big scene, when she received the cue to begin her dance, she would make it her dance indeed. At that moment, before the throng of first-nighters, she would defy the tyrannical director. She would forget the steps they had taught her. Before the gypsy campfire she would become a gypsy once again and dance, as never before, that native dance to the Fire God. Bihari, the gypsy, had taught her that dance, and there was nothing like it in all the world, she felt sure.
It was a daring resolve and might, she knew, result in disaster. Yet the very daring of it inspired her. And why not? Was she not after all, in spirit at least, a gypsy, a free soul unhampered by the shams and fake pretenses, the senseless conventions of a city’s life?
With this in mind, she danced in the dark theatre with utter abandon. Forgetting all but the little Fire God whose tiny eyes glowed at the rim of the yellow circle of light, she danced as she had many times by the roadsides of France.
She had reached the very zenith of the wild whirl. It seemed to Jimmie that she would surely leave the floor and soar aloft, when suddenly he became conscious that all was not well. He read it in her face. She did not stop dancing. She did not so much as speak; yet her lips formed words and Jimmie read them:
“Wings, fluttering of wings!”
“A plague on the wings!” exclaimed Jimmie, as his muscles stiffened in readiness for an emergency.
Wings! Did he hear them? He could not be sure. He would see what he could see!
He touched a button and a light flashed brightly from a white globe aloft.