For a full quarter hour Greta sat spellbound. She had seen dancing, but none like this. Now the tambourine was rattling and whirling over the little French girl’s head, and now it lay soundless on the deck. Now the dancer whirled so fast she was but a gleam of white and gold. And now her arms moved so slowly, her body turned so little, she might have seemed asleep.
“Bravo! Bravo!” cried Greta. “That was marvelous! Where did you learn it?”
“The gypsies taught me.” Dropping upon the deck, Jeanne rolled herself in a blanket like a mummy.
“People,” she said slowly, “believe that all gypsies are bad. That is not so. One of the very great preachers was a gypsy—not a converted gypsy—just a gypsy.
“Bihari and his wife were my godparents in France. They were wandering gypsies, but such wonderful people! They took me when I had no home. They gave me shelter. I learned to dance with my bear, such a wonderful bear. He is dead now, and Bihari is gone. I wish they were here!”
Next moment she went rolling over and over on the deck. Springing like a beautiful butterfly from a cocoon, she whirled away in one more riotous dance.
It was in the midst of this that a strange thing happened. Music came to them from across the waters—wild, delirious music.
Jeanne paused in her wild dance. For a space of seconds she stood there drinking in that wild glory of sound.
Then, as if caught by some spell, she began once more to dance. And her dance, as Greta expressed it later, was “like the dance of the angels.”
“Greta,” Jeanne whispered hoarsely when at last the music ceased and she threw herself panting on the deck, “that is gypsy music! No others can make music like that. There is a boat load of gypsies out there by Duncan’s Bay.”