ELEANOR
SMITH



*65 -?1 9 2



LADY ELEANOR SMITH is the daughter of the late Earl of Birkenhead, who was reputed to have "the best legal brain in England." Xot yet twenty-five, a girl of beauty and popular in English society, she astonished every one in 1930 by writing a novel that quite took London by storm. Critics praised Red IV agon to the skies. Published in America, it was greeted with the same favor by critics and public.
Red Wagon was a story of the circus. It was followed, in 1931, by Flamenco, a novel in which the gipsy strain predominated, and which proved an even greater success in all the English-speaking world.







BALLERINA







^Ballerina
BY LADY ELEANOR SMITH
Author of Red Wagon, Flamenco
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS INDIANAPOLIS



Copyright, 1932 By Eleanor Smith
First Edition
Printed in the United States of America
PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO., INC. BOOK MANUFACTURERS BROOKLYN, N. Y.



CONTENTS
PAGE
PART ONE
HARLEQUINADE 9
PART TWO
BALLET BY CANDLELIGHT 73
PART THREE
PRIMA BALLERINA 129
PART FOUR
CURTAIN CALL 239







BALLERINA







Part One HARLEQUINADE







Ballerina
Chapter 1
The morning had been fine but foggy, with a crimson sun glaring through pearly mist, but just before twilight the fog thickened, and as the sun sank a dark and bitter chili crept about the streets of London, and then torches were lighted, to glow like poppies in the dense yellow clouds of fog. The clattering of horses' hooves rang out sepulchrally in so much gloom, and the hoarse voices of link-boys shouting at one another sounded strangely enough, like the voices of drowned men, at the bottom of the sea.
In Kennington the streets were dark and greasy, and the fog was a black fog, a fog of soot. In the midst of so much dreariness the lights of the Kennington MusicHall winked gaily from the corner of the road like a cluster of bright tinsel twinkling on a Christmas-tree.
It was January: they were giving a pantomime at the music-hall, and the pantomime was named King Pippin.
It was 1845: the queen had reigned for eight years; pantomimes were robust, interminable and vulgar; artists slaved for a miserable salary, and audiences, the beerswilling, orange-sucking, jovial audiences of the 'forties, never really considered, even after about five hours' entertainment, that they had obtained their money's worth.
Therefore the favorite protagonists, recalled time after time before the curtain, were invariably so late changing that their relatives, longing passionately for supper, had to shiver patiently in the drafty stage-door passage, only
11



to become increasingly cold and cross. It was impossible to wait for friends in their dressing-rooms, for the reason that these dirty, dark little kennels were packed so close with sweating, swearing humanity that there would not have been room in them for so much as an extra mouse.
Paulina Varley, who was very small, always found herself pushed into the most drafty corner of all, the ono, nearest to the constantly swinging door. She might have comforted herself with the reflection that she scarcely ever came to the theater for her father, but she only feit increasingly cold and tired as she waited, and more inclined for self-pity than for satisfaction.
The Fairy Queen jostled past, and Paulina observed that she wore a new fur tippet and muff.
"Hullo, Polly, have you found anything yet?"
"No," she answered reluctantly, her eyes devouring the tippet. Lucky Fairy Queen! No wonder she looked gay and opulent and even a little disdainful of the sabersharp east wind! So might have been Paulina Varley— given a fur tippet and muff.
The Fairy Queen was gone, with a whiff of scent and a blast of cold air as the door banged behind her. And Paulina, shivering, hugged her plaid shawl tighter about her shoulders and waited in silence until the Demon King sauntered by.
"Well, Polly? Pa's just coming."
"I wish he'd make haste. It's terrible cold to-night."
The Demon King looked at her casually. Fifteen, was she? And he had thought her twelve, until two nights ago, with her tiny slight bones, her little peaked face, her plainly combed dark hair and enormous melancholy eyes. She was dressed childishly too, with her ugly merino dress and muslin pantalettes. The idea of Polly as a grown woman suddenly amused him, and he grinned.
"What is it?" she wanted to know.



"Come and have a bite with pa and me, Polly?"
"Not to-night. Nor can pa. That's why I've come for him. Mrs. Purdie wants him most particularly."
"Oh!" He whistled through his teeth. "Not much use my waiting, then?"
"Not much, Mr. Trotter."
"That being the case, Polly, I'll wish you good night, a piping hot supper, and pleasant dreams to you."
'Tm much obliged, Mr. Trotter," she replied with the old-fashioned gravity that made her seem so chiïdish, and then there was another blast of icy air, and the Demon King had gone.
Alfred Varley, Dame of the pantomime, made his appearance five minutes later. He was a short red-faced man with swarthy-brown eyes and a pessimistic outlook on life. It was not from her father that Paulina had inherited her delicate slightness, her personal fastidiousness or her soft voice.
"What's all this, Polly? What's she want of me tonight?"
"I don't know, pa. How should I know? She never tells me anything. But she wants you most particularly."
"Damn her, then. I've a mind not to go."
But this was bluster, and Paulina knew it. He said no more, but followed her out into the street. At first they were silent, as was of ten the case; the fog made them cough and the deadly cold pierced their bodies, biting, like fangs of ice. They passed gin-palaces aflare with lights and in one a woman sang a sailor's song in a husky voice that sounded rather comforting, crooning from amid so much gimcrack gaiety, and Alfred Varley cast longing glances inside these dens, but dared not tarry. He was conscious of resentment, and turned to Paulina.
"You're not half costing your poor pa money this winter, are you, Polly, my dear?"



She answered with immense scorn:
"Is it my fault that I can't get work? Goodness knows, I've tried everywhere. I can't help looking younger than I am. And I'm the best dancer at Madame Vanessi's."
"That's more than Madame herself says, if I may make so bold."
"She is a silly old woman. She can't teach me any more. She's old-fashioned—every one says so."
Alfred was silent. He had no wish to embark upon a dispute, and it was a curious fact that Paulina, who was in every other respect docility itself, evinced upon this matter of her dancing a passionate and fiery obstinacy with which he was quite unable to cope. She, who was normally of a humility proper to her circumstances, had always shocked him profoundly by her monstrous conceit, her overbearing wilfulness, her amazing selfconfidence on this question of her own talent. Nor, as far as he could make out, was her good opinion of herself in any way shared by her instructors, who were fond of describing her as sharp but lazy. As for making fun of Madame Vanessi, that was of course ridiculous, for Madame had taught her mother, Katie, and Katie had been a better dancer than Polly would ever be. It was just sauce, that's what it was, but sauce from such a well-behaved child as Polly was oddly disconcerting. And look at the money he'd paid old Vanessi for bringing her up as a ballet-girl! And what had she got to show for
it Puck and Ariel in a fourth-rate tour and a bit last
year in a Swansea panto? And this year nothing, nothing at all. He was keeping her and paying for her lessons just as though she were a young lady, and she'd turned down that offer to pose for the Italian firework chap at Vauxhall, and Bertha Purdie said she wanted smacking.
"Look where you're going, now," he cautioned her irritably as they crossed the road into Mott Street.



Here, in an alley of crooked ugly houses lighted dimly by one dismal gas-jet, resided the Widow Purdie, Alfred's landlady. Paulina drew a deep breath as they stepped into the narrow foggy hall. Mrs. Purdie filled her with a strange apprehension.
She at once appeared to greet them, a vast overfed pinkish woman with brass-bright hair and a frilled cap, and little shrewish eyes half-buried in layers of fat.
"Well, Alfred. I sent Polly to fetch you."
"Well, what is all this, anyhow?"
She answered coyly: "My brother Ted got back from foreign parts to-day, and I said to Ted, I said, reely I must have a supper for him, and I'll ask Mr. V. and his little girl, and then that Nurdo's back for a week, but I said to Ted, I said upon my word I'll not ask that goodfor-nothing juggling fellow because reely sometimes he gives me the creeps."
"A supper," said Varley sheepishly. "Well, well, that's good news, I'm sure, Mrs. Purdie."
"There's Welsh rarebit and a nice goose and a drop of something to keep out the cold—my brother Ted's seen to that." Then in a new sharp voice: "Put on your apron, Polly, to help in the kitchen. She can't expect to be waited on like a queen, can she, Alfred?"
"Of course not, to be sure. Do as you're bid, Polly. So Nurdo's back, is he?"
Paulina vanished silently.
She was hungry, she passionately desired warm food, but her intense dislike and fear of Mrs. Purdie made 11 Mott Street, Kennington, resemble nothing so much as a witch's den. Mrs. Purdie was determined to acquire Mr. Varley, and Paulina was tolerably certain that this evening had been selected for the moment of actual capture. In any case, they would both get drunk, and Mrs. Purdie would permit Mr. Varley all manner of familiari-



16
ties not best suited to the supper-table. And brother Ted would probably get drunk too. She did not care very much for Nurdo the juggler, but she would have preferred him to be present at supper, for the excellent reason that Nurdo, like Paulina, drank nothing but water.
She carried an armful of bottles into the parlor and therein encountered an enormous man with a purple face like a bruise and a breath reeking of whisky. Brother Ted, she thouglit drearily, was even worse than she had imagined. He watched her place the bottles carefully on the table, and said at length, in a voice like a fog-horn:
"Time for little girls to be in bed, ain't it?"
She said with dignity: "I am not a little girl," and added, as the conversation seemed about to languish: "I am nearly fifteen."
The sailor stared at her slowly, his jaws moving like a cow's as he chewed at a wad of tobacco. He said: "Too big, eh, to sit on an old man's knee?"
"Far too big."
"I'm not so sure."
He stretched out his hand vaguely as though to grasp her skirt, but she anticipated him with a whisk, agile as a kitten.
"And who the devil are you?"
She answered, with satisfaction: "I'm a dancer."
She sought an opportunity, whenever it was possible, to make this point clear, for her profession was her life-buoy, to which she clung sometimes in desperation. When the rent was overdue, or her bed was damp, or there were rats in the wainscot, or she was unsuccessful in obtaining employment, she repeated, over and over again to herself, that she was a dancer, and it was as though trumpets echoed to her words. And she had the best pointes and the best arabesque of any girl at Vanessi's. She would undoubtedly go far, much farther than her



mother, who had been a ballet-girl for a long, long time, and who had never been anything grander than a coryphée.
As Mrs. Purdie's brother continued to regard her with something of the stupefaction which he would have accorded to a pixy, she repeated, with an air of great conviction:
"I am a dancer."
But Mrs. Purdie, bearing down into the little room like a merchantman in full sail, ruined this statement by remarking with acidity: "Pay no attention to her nonsense, Ted. Dancer, indeed! Funny sort of dancer, I say, that can't ever get work. ... Go and fetch the hot plates, Polly, and don't you loiter so."



Chapter 2
Supper proceeded merrily.
The table was soon littered with dirty dishes, empty bottles, and guttering candles that needed snuffing. These candles flung crooked shadows about the room, illuminating the faces of Mr. Varley, Mrs. Purdie and her brother Ted with grotesque exaggeration, until they resembled nothing so much as the huge puppet heads that Paulina had so often seen leering down at her from Punch and Judy shows. Ted was asleep, snoring, his mouth wide open, a gross unlovely sight; opposite, their chairs drawn close together, sat Mr. Varley and Mrs. Purdie, their faces flushed and heated, whispering amorously into each other's ears. Mrs. Purdie, who occasionally emitted a shrill neighing laugh, wore her best cap cocked rakishly over one eye.
Paulina crept like a mouse from the table and went to snuggle close by the fire, that had sunk into a crimson ruin of smoldering coal. She was warm, and she was no longer hungry, but comfortably replete; by all rights, then and by the standards of her world, she should have been' utterly happy. So she was at first unable to account for the melancholy and intense desolation which weighed so heavily upon her soul. And then a peal of ribald laughter from the supper table reminded her once more of Mrs. Purdie, and of all that she most dreaded.
Glancing over her shoulder she beheld upon her father s face an expression of dumb sheepish enchantment. He remained thus transfixed for some seconds, then, leaning forward, kissed the woman hungrily, and their mouths clung together as though neither could bear to move
18



apart. Paulina continued to watch them over her shoulder. Alfred Varley was now whispering in a thick eager voice; the words poured forth in a torrent of incoherent muttering.
Mrs. Purdie gave him a little push and turned away her face, which now resembled nothing so much as a huge overblown peony.
"For shame, Alfred Varley! Have done, will you? Don't you know an honest woman when you see one? I'm sure poor Purdie'd turn in his grave could he but hear what you're saying to me. . .
Mr. Varley was here heard to consign the late lamented Purdie to demonie regions. Brother Ted continued to snore. Paulina, sitting on her heels, listened in an agony of apprehension. Nor were her fears in any way exaggerated, for Mr. Varley, piqued, amorous, impatient and very drunk, tottered suddenly to his feet and smote the table loudly with his fist.
"Mrs. Purdie! Will you do me the favor of listening attentively to what I'm about to say? For the first, and, I may say, I hope the last time, then, Mrs. Purdie, fairest ornament of a sex ever esteemed and (from a distance) deeply respected, by Alfred Varley, I offer you my hand, my 'eart and a new wedding-ring. In fact, my all. Now, Mrs. Purdie, or rather Bertha "
But at this point in Mr. Varley's proposal of marriage his legs, the inexplicable feebleness of which had been for some moments perplexing him, now refused pointblank to function, and he subsided noisily and ungracefully into his chair. He gathered, however, from the exuberance of the caresses now lavished upon him by Mrs. Purdie, that his suit had not been entirely unsuccessful. He was at last affianced to the buxom landlady, and he hoped with all his heart that the reports of her savings had been in no way exaggerated.



Paulina went over to the window and pulled aside the curtain. An inky fog pressed, threatening, against the pane. It was cold, and her bedroom would be colder, but the sitting-room, with all its warmth and smoke and light and cheerfulness, had become since her father's declaration almost repulsive.
The Varleys had lived intermittently at Mott Street, Kennington, for several years. During that period Mrs. Purdie, so gay and good-natured in the presence of her male lodgers, had, in her relentless persecution of the luckless Paulina, proved herself a bully of the first order. Latterly, as the subjugation of Mr. Varley grew daily more probable, Mrs. Purdie's hostility expressed itself more violently. Frequently she pinched; occasionally she cuffed. Her pinch was an exquisite, devilish work of art; her blows might well have been the envy of a heavyweight pugilist. Yet, devastating as were these physical demonstrations of Mrs. Purdie's enmity, Paulina on the whole preferred them to the lash of her shrewish and vindictive tongue. Sometimes she begged her father to leave Mott Street for more congenial lodgings, but always he blustered, refusing with every show of indignation. He was very well where he was; Mrs. Purdie looked after him and made him comfortable; naturally the excellent widow, respecting him as she did, thought it a pity Polly couldn't support herself after all that time at old Vanessi's. But he was damned if he was going to leave.
And now he would never leave, because he was going to marry Mrs. Purdie, and Paulina would thus acquire a stepmother.
The first Mrs. Varley, known in the corps de ballet as Katie Dean, hailed originally from the East End of London, where she had answered to the name of Katarina Lipovsky. Slim, elongated, exotic, with almond eyes and a waxen skin, Katie, after various amorous misadventures



common to her type and period, had at last decided upon the adventure of matrimony, selecting as her victim Alfred Varley, at that time a fairly prosperous low comedian.
The marriage was not a success. Alfred, hearty, sensual and improvident, never came near to understanding his wife. She was at once sullen, eager, calculating and ardent; she was intensely Jewish, which is the same as saying that she was intensely Oriental; she was morbid, fiery and inclined to be consumptive. The child Paulina was a dark little baby with the mournful eyes of a monkey; it was sickly and difficult to rear; when it was five its mother died of the disease that had haunted all her brief dissatisfied youth.
Her child, dragged up by a hundred indifferent landladies in a hundred squalid lodging-houses, miraculously overcame its early delicacy, growing into a strange elfish being, tiny, remote, fastidious, a prim Ariel with a passion for picture-books. When Paulina was six she was apprenticed to Madame Vanessi. The stage was her obvious destiny; whether she developed into actress or ballet-girl, a sound knowledge of classical and acrobatie dancing could not but be of assistance to her in her future career.
She was always wise for her age, silent and patiënt and uncomplaining. Her childhood had been bleak enough; she had trailed after her father through England, Scotland and Wales, trotting like his shadow in and out of innumerable dirty, dismal theaters, but at a period when babies of seven and eight slaved daily in airless factories nobody was particularly disposed to pity her plight. She had danced almost as soon as she had walked, and at first she had danced for joy, as children will, but by the time she was seven she was irrevocably caught in the spokes of a wheel named routine. The pupils of Madame Vanessi (an immensely old Italian, difficult to dissociate from her



natural background, a hurdy-gurdy) never danced for joy.
They danced because they had to dance. They danced until the sweat streaked their faces and their toes bied and their strained limbs ached. They danced for fear of Madame Vanessi with her sharp, beady black eyes and her long wicked cane and her terrible tongue. They danced because the lightness of their steps, the dexterity of their style, represented to them their future bread and butter. They had little ambition. The recent visit to London of a goddess in white tarlatan, of a sylphide named Taglioni, meant nothing to them. She was a spirit, soaring in the clouds. They had to eat. And so they slaved and toiled and clung to a bar, the better to make their joints supple and whimpered when their teacher struck them, and arched their insteps mournfully, as weary wrestlers exhibit their biceps.
And Paulina Varley, considered promising when first she came to the school, learned her evolutions with ease and performed them listlessly, as pupils will who are stale and discouraged, and weary to death of a routine undistinguished by one single spark of enthusiasm.
Paulina was stubborn upon one point: she persisted that she could dance, and that were she permitted six months' rest she would surprise her teachers.
"Undoubtedly, lazy one," was Vanessi's invariable sardonic reply.
Rest! Amelita Vanessi had never heard the word. She was a slave-driver, determined, pitiless, a tireless machine that turned out ballet-girls by the dozen as the years passed by and dust lay thicker upon the chairs and walls of the dancing academy, and piaster began to peel off the nose of Vestris, a bust of whom stood upon the mantelpiece in the big room.
And here, where her mother, the furiously energetic



Katarina, had danced before her, Paulina danced in front of a great mirror that reflected her mistily, as a capering waif with thin arms and tired eyes. She had danced thus for eight years, and saw no possibility of escape. It was true that her father spoke vaguely of a summer tour, but now, af ter the disaster of his entanglement with Mrs. Purdie, the future seemed unutterably black.
Paulina was fond of her father but without really liking him very much. He was parsimonious and cowardly and always grumbling, but he was a familiar figure in her ever-shifting world, and sometimes, when he was kindly disposed, he would buy her sugar-plums, or even an occasional story-book. He admired what he called a fine figure of a woman and therefore considered his daughter plain; for this he pitied her. It was certainly true that the theatrical managers who from time to time visited Madame Vanessi's Academy ignored her completely, and even the firework-proprietor who had wanted her to pose at Vauxhall said that it was just as well she had refused— she hadn't the figure for tights.
No. He liked Paulina well enough, but he despised her for being inconspicuous in a world where showiness of face and figure were the most important assets of her sex.
And she, who feit for him a queer amused undemonstrative affection, resented his infatuation for Mrs. Purdie with a bitterness of which he would not have supposed her capable. There had been several women in Alfred's life, but to Paulina Mrs. Purdie was a monster, and that her father should desire to marry the fat landlady seemed to her atrocious, disloyal and cruel—all the things, in fact, that it actually was not.
She thought, desolate: "He won't want me any more or notice if I go. She will mend his clothes now, and go to the pawn-shops for him, and send away the people that



he owes money to. There will be nothing for me any longer—nothing except Vanessi's."
And as she reflected he shouted to her across the table: "Here, Polly, don't mope, come and toast the happy pair!"
She looked at them. They were by this time very drunk, with mottled faces and glazed eyes; they stared at her heavily, and Mrs. Purdie wiped her nose with her hand. The candles fluttered, smoking gustily like tiny bonfires.
"I won't!" Paulina told them in a sudden rage. "I hate you both!" She stamped her foot.
And then she ran out of the room.



Chapter 3
It was cold in the hall, and the stairs, which were in complete darkness, seemed bitterly haunted by that same fog which hung so thickly about the house. But on the top step Paulina collapsed and began to cry, for her world had crashed about her ears and she was most sorely afraid. And as she sobbed and shivered, and dreaded Mrs. Purdie with all her heart and soul, a door opened softly behind her and some one watched her, shading a candle with his hand.
For some time she noticed nothing, then a voice whispered "Lina," and she started, for only one person called her Lina, and that was Nurdo, the juggler, and she had forgotten that he was in the house.
He repeated, softly and urgently: "Lina, Lina, what is it?"
"Oh," she said, swallowing her tears, "I did not . . . mean to disturb you. I had quite forgotten .. . but I'll go to bed."
"To bed! To cry some more?"
"Oh, let me alone. Please."
But he came to sit beside her on the stairs, his eyes fixed upon her little round neck and dark silky head.
"How long is it since you have seen me, Lina?"
"Oh, very long! Perhaps two years."
"Two years! It is three."
She turned her head to look at him. He was exactly the same. She remembered, very vividly, his scarred sallow face with its slanting eyes, and his black curly hair, that made her think of astrakhan. She remembered, too, the heavy perfume of the scent with which he always
25



drenched himself. Oh, yes, he was just the same, but he had always been kind to her, and she was glad to see him again.
She said, blowing her nose with a very clean pockethandkerchief: "My father is going to marry Mrs. Purdie."
"Then he is a dumkopj," said the juggler. He added, after a pause: "Is that why you cry?"
"Yes. I don't like her—and I think she hates me."
"Are you still a dancer, Lina?"
She nodded.
Nurdo held the candle close to her face.
"But you are changed, Linal You are already a woman. How old are you?"
"Nearly fifteen."
"You were so little, when I was last here. You had a rag-doll, that you put to bed like a baby. And you called it Julia."
"Where are you playing, Nurdo?"
He told her. At the obscure music-hall of a suburb near by. He was there for a week, and then he would go abroad to join a traveling circus on the Continent, for he had been in England for three months, touring the provinces.
"Will you come and see my act to-morrow night, Lina? I can get you a seat."
"Oh, yes, please."
She was smiling now, transformed by so much kindness.
Casually, almost furtively, he put his hand over hers, which seemed to him colder, more tiny than a snowflake. She might have been a little ghost sitting there on the stairs to keep him company. He shivered.
"How bitter it is here—come for a moment to my room. It's warm, and I have some chestnuts that we can eat together."
"Very well."



She followed him into a slice of a room where a fire blazed, and hampers were piled one on top of another, and a table was littered with colored balls and cardboard bottles and gaudy posters of himself. Paulina thought it a nice room, and said as much.
Nurdo watched her impassively. He looked very thin, very saturnine, as he stood there in his shabby dressinggown and fixed her with his narrow Slav eyes and ran his fingers through the oily black curls that feil over his collar. But he was sorry for her, thinking it sad that one so young and frail should suffer thus through the follies of a wastrel father, and he rejoiced sincerely that she should have found, in an hour of need, so splendid a person as himself.
When she smiled at him again he went across the room, knelt down beside her and kissed her, cupping his hands about her face.
Paulina was astonished. She could not recollect that any one had ever wanted to do such a thing to her before. Men were not apt to consider her attractive, being rather more disposed than not to regard her as a child, and a plain child at that. And everybody, by which she meant the other young ladies at Vanessi's, had at one time or another informed her that she was too skinny. She submitted to Nurdo's kiss without much liking it, but he had been so kind to her that she feit it would have been ungrateful to protest.
He, having kissed her, remained sitting on his heels, still staring at her. So much freshness and sweetness had seldom come his way, and in a moment his pity for Paulina was swept away by his desire for her. He was a simple creature, stupid, egotistical, industrious; when he was not working he liked to have a woman about, and he preferred that his woman should be soft, yielding, feminine. Paulina possessed these qualities, combined with



all the additional charm of youth; fond of inventing pretty symbols for women, he immediately likened her to a white rosebud. He told her this, greatly pleased by his own poetic imagery, smiling, and flashing his fine teeth.
"I say this, little one, from the depths of my heart. You are beautiful."
He kissed her again, more ardently than before. She shut her eyes, turning her face away.
"Please, Lina!" he said coaxingly, "already I love you very much, yes, very much indeed. You mustn't be afraid of me. ... I will see that those others don't make you cry again . . . but you must be sympathetic to me. There! Do you find that so difficult?"
"I want to go now."
"Already? When the chestnuts are ready to eat?"
She got up, undecided, and looked at him doubtfully, shuffling one foot. She was young enough to regard roast chestnuts as a treat. And his room, unlike her own, glowed with warmth. Nor did it entirely displease her to be loved, after so much neglect, even if she found his eager kisses strangely disturbing.
She reflected. "Very well, I'll stay," she said at last, "but we must be quiet, or Mrs. Purdie will hear and be very angry."
So they sat together on the hearth-rug slitting chestnuts, and he was gentle with her, and she talked to him of her dancing, and of how much she longed to get work.
He glanced at her sidewise, frowning, as was his way when he was scheming.
"You see," she said, looking very serious, "I seem much younger than I am, that's the trouble. I am smaller than the other girls. Managers never look at me. It's very disheartening. But I can dance, really, really I can."



He said casually, not looking at her:
"Would you like to come with me?"
"Where?"
"Where? All over the world. Once before, in Russia, I had a young lady who assisted me with my act. She handed me my props, standing back-stage, oh, very pretty, dressed in bright clothes—spangles. You could do that, and dance too, while I make my quick change. I would pay. . . ." He hesitated, made a swift calculation and ceased altogether to be the lover. He concluded, practically: "I could pay you at first not at all. No salary. But your keep and your food—I would give you those."
"I can't come, Nurdo."
"But why? Why? You say you have no work. I offer you work—I, Nurdo, the Great Nurdo! Why, then?"
She said, sighing: "My father wouldn't like me to go away from England."
"Your father? I do not think that he cares very much about you. Look, he is down-stairs now, with that fat pig of a woman in his arms, while you are up-stairs, here, with me. Does that look as though he minded what you do?"
"He doesn't know."
But she sighed. Nurdo continued to watch her. He was now quite certain that he wanted her with him—his desire having been accentuated by the practical advantages (that had only just occurred to him) of her talent as a dancer. It was always a good investment, in an act such as his—this producing of a pretty girl to divert the attention of the audience while he made such changes of costume and apparatus as custom decreed. And he found Paulina enchanting. He thought of living with her, alone with her, in the caravans and doss-houses where he was



accustomed to sleep and cook his meals; he thought of eating supper with her, of making love to her, and was much moved. He caught her hand.
"Come away!"
And he began to talk to her of countries across the sea: of Italy, with groves of olive-trees and sun-baked white cottages; of Russia, with its silver snow and tinkling sledge-bells; of France and Germany, of the dazzling frozen mountains of Switzerland, the Ice-Queen's country.
"And Spain! I will take you to the bull-fights there, Lina, and then there is Venice, where I worked in the puppet-theaters when I was very young, and the fair at Nijni Novgorod, with gipsies and their dancing bears, and
the chestnut forests outside Paris You will come, won't
you, and dance better than you have ever danced in all this fog and soot?"
"Oh, be quiet!" she interrupted. "Listen . . . some one's coming."
He was silent, and they both waited, holding their breath, for the shuffling footsteps to pass by. But the footsteps ceased for a moment, and there came a rattling at the key-hole, as though some one pawed there, eager to pry, and then the door was flung open and Mrs. Purdie lurched forward on the threshold.
Her bodice was torn from her vast bosom and her frilled cap was still in sad disarray; her face was mottled and dripped with sweat; she breathed stertorously, through her nose, as though she were asleep. But she was not asleep; her little red angry eyes glittered with blind rage and her mouth moved, gabbling strange and dreadful words.
"You two . . . a case-house, a brothel . . . that's what you take this house for, isn't it? Well, you're mistaken. . . . Yes, mistaken, you damn dirty rat—you hear what I say, and Polly, too, little harlot. . . . I've found



you out, my girl, at last, and since you're to be my daughter I'll thrash you for it, I'll . . ."
Nurdo said with insolence, barring the way: "Let her alone. We shall leave now—both of us, for good."
She made a step forward, but staggered and would have fallen, had she not caught at the door.
"Oh, you'11 leave? And your bill? And her father?— I'll wake him; only wait till he hears his little pet's no better than a pr—a prostitute, yes, a vulgar prostitute, you heard what I said. . . ."
And she feil to shrieking, "Alfred! Alfred!" But there was no answer from down-stairs.
Nurdo walked across to the door.
"Lina! Run quick and get your things. Please make haste. We can stay here no longer."
Paulina said loftily, although her legs were trembling: "I shall be very quick. Wait for me."
And she ran past the dragon at the door, gaining the shelter of her own room. Here, with shaking fingers, she thrust her earthly possessions into an old hamper of Mr. Varley's. She was quick indeed, but there was no reason why her packing should have taken long. Two merino dresses, some under-garments, a practise-dress, three pairs of ballet shoes, her bonnet and shawl, and she was ready, dragging her hamper along the passage. When she reached Nurdo's room she found him also engaged in packing, while Mrs. Purdie, in a chair, wept noisily.
Paulina, very white, her nose in the air, sat down in another chair while Nurdo stuffed shirts and waistcoats into a shabby black bag. He was preoccupied; he whistled through his teeth. By the time he had finished packing Mrs. Purdie was snoring, fast asleep.
"I'll go down-stairs," said Paulina at length, "and wait while you bring the luggage. My hamper's very heavy; I can scarcely drag it."



"You must call a cab," he told her over his shoulder.
She went down into the dark hall and opened the front door. Outside the inky fog hung over the street like a blanket of soot; she heard footsteps and started when a portly policeman materialized from so much mystery. The policeman, however, was disposed to be friendly; on hearing that she required a cab he replied that as his beat took him past a rank he would send one back to Mott Street in about ten minutes. She wished that she could run away with the policeman instead of with Nurdo.
She returned to the hall and sat down on the bottom step of the stairs. A clock ticked sepulchrally, and upstairs she could hear Nurdo dragging their luggage along the passage.
Moved by a sudden impulse she opened the door of the sitting;room and looked in. It was dark; she could distinguish nothing. She called her father's name, but no one replied.
"Oh, I wish I had a light!"
She took a few cautious steps into the room and stumbled over something lying upon the floor. It was the body of a man. She bent down and put her hand over his face, groping. The body belonged to Mr. Varley, who lay sprawled in a stupor upon the hearth-rug. She called him again, louder, and shook him with all her strength, but her efforts to rouse him were useless. He would not wake for many hours. And then she cried a little, and went out of the room and shut the door behind her. She sat down again on the stairs and waited for Nurdo.



Ckapter 4
They were in the cab, which was old and shaky and smelled of stale straw. They drove for a long time in silence, and the fog forced them to drive very slowly indeed. At last Nurdo lighted a cigar, which cast over his face a red glow, and Paulina spoke, for the sake of saying something.
"I had almost forgotten," she said in a very small voice, "what you look like."
As he made no reply she continued: "You see, I have not seen you for nearly three years, and then only for such a short time, and partly in the dark. It seems very strange to be running away with you—very strange indeed."
"And you belong to me now," he said, after a pause.
She reflected. "Will you be kinder to me than the others were?"
"Naturally. Kave I not already told you that I love you? Why else should I take you with me?"
"Because you want me to dance."
"Oh, that! Yes, certainly I want you to dance, but I could find a hundred other girls to do that. No. I take you because you are sweet, and I want to make love to you."
"But I am a very good dancer," she objected.
He patted her hand. "I am sure. We will see tomorrow. But if you were Taglioni, dancing while I performed, people would look, not at you, but at Nurdo."
"I don't think so."
"You have not seen my act, little Lina."
She was too tired to argue. Try as she would, her eyes refused to remain open, and then her head nodded
33



until at last it sank upon his shoulder. He told her to take off her bonnet.
She obeyed. It was her best, of brown straw with a wreath of buttercups, but she was too sleepy to notice whether or not he was taking proper care of so precious an object.
She slept, holding his sleeve with both hands; her face was a white flower drifting in the musty darkness of the cab. He smoked, motionless, his mind revolving a hundred problems concerning the complicated manipulation of colored balls. The fog lifted a little as the cab crawled on through wider, gayer streets, where, as it was so soon after Christmas, the shop windows still blazed with lights, and brilliant toys, and Christmas trees aflare with gilt and tinsel.
Nurdo put his head out of the cab.
"Go to the Golden Cross Hotel."
They were a strange pair of lovers shut up there in the dark together. If the ghosts of Harlequin and Columbine prowled abroad that night and saw them pass, they must have laughed, so as not to weep, at this tawdry elopement of the dancer and the juggler.



Chapter 5
For six months they wandered over the face of the earth. It seemed sometimes to Paulina as she lay awake at night in her caravan, jolting, rattling, pounding over strange roads, that they must have done something frightful, have committed between them some fearful sin, that condemned them to eternal wanderings, that drove and goaded them along a haunted road that had no end and must for ever deny to them repose.
They trailed through savage Rumanian villages, and, crossing the wild Carpathian Mountains, found themselves traversing the even more primitive plains of Hungary. They threaded their way toward the Danube, wandering some way beside this stream, only at last to forsake it, and then there were pine forests, and then, inexplicably, Bavaria, with painted houses and gentians spilled like sky upon the meadows. And in a few weeks Switzerland, and then Italy.
They never traveled alone, but were always part of a long procession—trailing with gaudy wagons, gilded chariots, elephants and camels and spotted horses. In the day-time Paulina played with almond-eyed Chinese children that had learned to juggle before they could walk, and petted tawny kittens that were newborn lion cubs, and warmed milk so that the Hindu charmer might tempt his python, and knitted jackets for the shivering monkeys, and made herself useful in a hundred different ways.
Twice a day she danced, in a spangled tunic and pink tights, and at first, freed from the iron supervision of old Vanessi, she danced with a gaiety and abandon that
35



she had never known before. She had youth and freshness and a quicksilver agility; Rambert, the circus proprietor, professed himself pleased with her performance. Twice a day, too, she watched Nurdo juggling. It was her business to stand quietly in the background beside a little table, watchful, tense, handing him his various properties with a deftness that must of course be self-effacing. He would have been very angry had she called attention to herself at such moments.
And so she watched her lover.
In the ring, vividly illuminated by the blaze of naphtha ïlares, he took on a new and strange personality. His body seemed talier, more muscular, in his costume of vermilion tights and black sequin trunks. He wore sham rubies stuck in his ears and painted purple shadows round his eyes. Perhaps it was this trick that made them seem so huge, so glittering and dilated, like the eyes of the tigers staring from their cages behind the red plush curtains that draped the ring-entrance. His face as he worked was agonizing, distorted, in its terrific concentration. He smiled, but the smile looked as though it were painted on, like the shadows about his eyes. He set his teeth, so that little muscles jumped in his cheeks and beads of sweat rose like bubbles beneath the powder on his forehead. And always about his head, like a bright flashing halo, there swirled a cluster of colored balls with silver stars painted or them, or sparkling gilded bottles, or spinning plates, whizzing like shiny moons in the blue hazy air of the big tent.
If he missed a trick he grunted, and the sweat streamed down his face. He grimaced then, and his eyes devoured the balls or plates as though he would eat them. Afterward he invariably became sulky and morose, brooding upon this tiny mishap that could scarcely have been remarked by the spectators. He was a strange man.



At first he had frightened her almost out of her wits. Then, slowly, she became accustomed to him—to his passion, his egotism, his melancholy. She tried then to love him, for she herself was starved of affection, but it was not easy. He demanded from her submission, obedience to his wishes and was content with that. He could not give her tenderness, for he knew nothing of that. If she curled herself close to him, or stroked his hair, he became instantly suspicious—she wanted something out of him—money, of course. Well, she wasn't going to get it, did she hear what he said? Except during the brief moments of their love-making he treated her carelessly, like an apprentice, another boy. He could no more give affection than he could take it. He was ignorant of such things. His desire for her, so swiftly born in the fog and murk of a winter night, persisted in summer lands, blossomed beneath sweeter skies. She was his girl, his partner, and they worked and ate and slept together. He was good to her, too; as he frequently remarked, he didn't beat her, did he, and he gave her plenty to eat and an occasional present.
She was inclined to be too clinging, too dependent upon his every mood, and while in a general manner he approved of this trait in women he discovered that it might occasionally be carried to excess. But he complained, kindly but firmly, reminding himself that she was very young, only fifteen, and she promised to improve. She waited upon him conscientiously, mending his clothes, washing his shirts, sweeping his wagon, airing his sheets. She was as useful as she was charming, and he decided, although he had no intention of being faithful to her, to adopt her as a permanency. And it was something, as he often reminded himself, not to regret an act so impulsive as this abduction of Lina from the depths of Kennington.



She, whose emotions had been at first dazed by the tremendous upheaval of her life, took some time to awake from the bright bewildering dream of this new nomad existence. Her past life, the squalid lodging-house, the sad, dusty dancing school, these seemed less real than the huge grayish mushroom of the circus tent and its rows of scarlet gilded caravans. Her father, Madame Vanessi, Mrs. Purdie, had all receded somewhere into the background of her mind, vague shapes, with vaguer faces. Other, more vivid figures had displaced them; Nurdo, Monsieur Rambert, the Cossack rider, the Chinese babies and the Indian snake-charmer.
She supposed that all her life long she would trail with Nurdo from one foreign land to another, and sometimes, when this thought occurred to her she knew a moment's panic, for it seemed to her obvious that as she grew older she would become more tired, and she was quite often enoügh tired as it was.
Often at night she would wake up to find that Nurdo was no longer in his bunk. At first she was afraid, then curious; once she lay awake, saw him slip out of the wagon and followed him on tiptoe. He vanished inside the Big Top; there was a bright moon. She watched him through the flaps for a little while. He was practising a new trick; he did not return to the wagon until dawn. Always after these nocturnal escapades he was morose and gloomy; he refused to eat, refused to talk, and juggled with anything upon which he could lay his hands knives, spoons, forks, candlesticks. Grimly, with a sort of desperation, hour after hour, Nurdo sent these objects whirling in rings of silver about his head. Once he collapsed upon the table and wept. He said that he was intent upon a very special trick, and that he could not learn it. Yet, when she would have comforted him, he pushed her away.
Paulina practised too. Her dancing-floor was a plank,



her bar the gilded rail of a circus wagon. Here, with solemn concentration, she devoted such time as was her own to fouettés and arabesques and entrechats.
"Silly," said Nurdo with disdain.
"Why silly?"
"What do you want? To be a dancer? There is no place in the circus for dancers. You are very silly. Why not learn the bar or the flying rings?"
But here her physique, always misleading, was against her. Her narrow body, her thin slight arms and legs gave an impression of delicacy altogether incongruous in an aspiring athlete. Old Rambert said to Nurdo in German:
"That girl of yours will never make an acrobat—why not leave her alone? One breath of wind and she would be blown off the trapeze. She has arms like sticks, and no muscle. She is a pretty dancer; let her dance."
And so she danced, and nobody paid much attention to her, and she continued to make friends with the animals in the menagerie, and shared a house on wheels with Nurdo, the juggler, and was scolded for coldness when he feit amorously inclined, and mended his soeks, and understood very little indeed what it was all about.
The circus dragged its way through Italy into France. In Lille a clown's wife drew her aside and said:
"You should watch that man of yours. He is so strange lately that one can only think he is drinking. Why do you not look after him?"
There was nothing strange to Paulina in the fact of any one drinking too much. It did not seem to her to be worth mentioning. She said as much, and added:
"It is because of his new trick. He won't teil me about it, but he practises all the time, even at night. He wouldn't listen to me, although I begged him not to."
The clown's wife laughed.
"You are very ignorant of the circus, ma petite. A



juggler who is so enamored of a new trick that he practises at night! I will say to you only this: Be careful. They are strange people, jugglers, and for my part I assure you that I would never have taken up with one."
That night Nurdo sobbed in his sleep and would not rest, but paced up and down in the wagon like the new panther that had arrived the day before. He said to her wildly:
"You don't understand! How can you understand? Will you at least leave me in peace or must I throw you out of my wagon?"
She was so shocked by this new furious hostility in his voice that she gazed at him, speechless. He continued, his eyes brilliant, the scar gleaming livid across his face:
"You are a child, and not even belonging to the circus. If you will not let me alone when my mind is working how can I let you stay? Can you not understand that it is gigantic, what I am trying to do? If I can succeed in my trick I shall be the most famous juggler in the world, and I shall buy you diamonds, like a fine lady. . .
"But you will be ill, if you don't sleep."
"Sleep!" His voice was like the lash of a whip. "How can I sleep, will you teil me that, how can I sleep when I am working?"
He looked at her fixedly, and then after a pause, very gently, in a voice devoid of all expression, he began to abuse her in four languages, calling her the most vile, the most filthy names imaginable. She was frightened, then. When people were angry with you they shouted. When they wished to insult you they became excited, and their faces grew red. Nurdo, pale, dispassionate, almost nonchalant, was something new to her experience. She hid her face in the bedclothes.
"Oh, don't, don't. Don't be angry with me. I'm sorry, I'll never bother you again."



He stopped abruptly, still staring at her. He said, uneasily: "Lina . .
She continued to weep.
"Lina."
He went across to the bunk where she lay crouched, moving slowly, as though apprehensive, knelt down beside her and laid his head upon her breast.
"Lina . . . I am so tired . . . poor Lina ... but I've been working so hard, I am so tired."
She whispered: "Poor Nurdo!"
"Yes, poor Nurdo. Poor Lina. Both so tired."
He sighed; his head still rested upon her breast. Timidly she began to stroke his hair. He kept still, permitting her. She persevered, waiting for him to fling her away, as was his wont. But he did not fling her away; he stayed quietly beside her. She went on stroking his head. Her hand trembled. At last, after so long, he wanted affection more than passion; and it was too late, for how was she to love him now that he had taught her to be af raid of him?



Chapter 6
He grew quieter, more composed, after this incident, although he continued to toss and moan in his sleep. She at last succeeded in discovering what it was he was trying so desperately to achieve; he wanted to stand on his hands, a globe balancing upon the soles of his feet, while he flung his head back the better to juggle upon his forehead with a cup, a saucer and a spoon. Foolish Nurdo! He who earned a comfortable salary by standing upright to toss colored balls into the air, must needs torture himself, deprive himself of food and sleep, simply because he could not perform the same tricks turned upside down! But she was happier, for despite his glumness he now treated her gently, with consideration.
The circus arrived in Bruges.
Here, it seemed, were peace and beauty. The city rose like a jewel from the dank mists of a Flemish autumn. The sad mellow houses, so gravely reflected in the dark mirrors of canals, huddled close together, brooding, enchanted, for this was surely the secret city of the Sleeping Beauty, that none might dare disturb. The spires of many churches floated in the air, seeming to tremble in the dim dreamy light of a day that would swiftly be fïnished and done with. Bells chimed, remote, silverthroated, muted by the mist rising so palely from the secret waterways of this strange town.
In a corner of the Grande Place the circus tent struggled to life like some gray monster rearing itself awake. Outside the tent they strung together an arch of tulip-colored fairy-lights, and thumped at the big drum until it drowned the music of the bells. A group of people collected at
42



the entrance, stolid, well-behaved, dour of aspect— Flemish burgers and their families, prepared to take their pleasure solemnly enough.
Inside Nurdo's wagon Paulina, already dressed in her spangled tunic, bent over a few square inches of mirror the better to powder her neck and shoulders. Old Rambert talked often enough of dressing-tents for his artists, but the tra veling circus of 1845 was still far from these, and there occurred twice a day, with depressing regularity, this breathless scuffling from one costume to another in a cramped caravan little bigger than a rabbit hutch.
Paulina glanced out of the window and saw that the first number (dappled Arab ponies with manes and tails like silver fleece) already waited to go into the ring. And Nurdo had not come back. She tied the ribbons of her dancing sandals, found her tambourine and was ready. But there was no sign of Nurdo, so she went across to the bunk upon which dangled his scarlet tights and held the candle close to them, examining a darn that she had made only that morning. It was a good darn, and passed her test successfully. She sighed. They looked forlorn, these long limp empty tights, and ghost-like, as though they were really a part of the man himself and had grown weary of waiting for him. She reflected, not for the first time, that the tights were nothing without Nurdo and Nurdo, to be quite candid, not very much without the tights. And then, at last, he came into the wagon.
He wore his greatcoat, with the rather moth-eaten fur collar buttoned up to his chin, and his hands were buried deep in his pockets. His wild fuzzy black hair stood up in a mop round his head, and his long face looked sallow, greenish. He gaped at her and asked why she was ready so early.
"It's not early. It's late. Take off your coat and I'll hang it up."



But he motioned her away.
"No. You mustn't come near me. Fm not—I don't
want " He paused, gulped, and finally produced:
"I am not working to-night."
She told him severely that he was being very silly.
"You don't understand, Lina. You never understand me. I am not blaming you because you are only a child and I should never have taken you from your home in the first place. But since you are here you must not interfere with me, do you understand?"
He sat down on the bunk and relapsed into silence.
"Nurdo, will you please get ready?"
No answer.
"Nurdo, the Arabs have nearly finished their act."
He looked at her then.
"You see," he said with an air of sad finality, "if I can really not learn my new trick I am no use as a juggler, no use at all. And so it is better to give up. You have brought bad luck to me, Lina."
He dropped his head upon his hands and groaned.
She said nothing, but went across to him and began unbuttoning his coat. He made no protest. Her fingers trembled. Then his cravat, his shirt.
"Get up, Nurdo."
He obeyed like an automaton.
"Look, your vest . . . you must be quick . . . and your tights."
She wondered drearily whether or not he had been drinking. She thought not; she could not detect even the faintest smell of spirits and he behaved more as though he were walking in his sleep.
"Make-up," he said briefly, when she had helped him into his black spangled trunks and stuck the sham rubies in his ears.
"Then sit down."



She wrapped her apron round his neck and took up a stick of grease-paint, streaking it, kneading it with her fingers. Rouge, powder, a pencil. As she worked, swiftly and deftly, she saw that the blank look had left his eyes, which now seemed to be regarding her with an expression of black hostility. But he said nothing.
"We must go now. The clowns are on."
He followed her to the tent, still in silence, walking stiffly, staring straight in front of him. Occasionally a muscle in his cheek twitched spasmodically. They knelt down together to arrange his properties. She was afraid; her hands still trembled. Suddenly she feit that she could bear this silence no longer. She turned to him impulsively.
"Nurdo, are you ill?"
He swung his head round then, looked at her slantwise, with cunning eyes.
"Puta," he said, and spat with great ostentation upon the ground.
"I wish that I had never come away with you," she told him sadly.
The clowns came jostling and panting out of the ring. Their costumes were bright as butterfly-wings, their faces grotesquely chalked. They bade Nurdo good evening, but he made no reply.
"Come," he said to Paulina over his shoulder.
She was cold with fear as she followed him into the ring. He might break down, he might refuse even to begin his act. She tried to catch his eye, to look at him pleadingly, but he held his head stiffly, like a soldier on parade.
She need have had no fear.
He might be sick, feverish, crazy and tormented, but he was also a showman and a trouper. When he stepped into the blazing brightness of the arena he flung off his



real somber personality only to assume his personality of the ring, that of the gay, care-free, skilful juggler. He smiled, his fixed artificial smile. Easily, gracefully, he tossed the whirling starry balls above his head, jumping and leaping, a gay and vivid figure.
She was relieved, and showed it by her dancing. She feit suddenly strong, exultant, capable of the most exacting feats. She soared upon her toes and feit that she could remain thus poised for many hours. When she sprang into the air she was a bird darting free and her fleet silver sandals were winged for flight. This energy, this joyous confidence, was more exhilarating than a heady wine. She thought, as she bowed to decorous and sedate applause:
"I have never danced so well before. Perhaps I never will again."
And she was puzzled, for the frenzy to excel that had been hers that night could not altogether be explained by Nurdo's return to common sense. He came back into the ring after her dance and finished his performance efficiently enough. Then they, in their turn, disappeared behind the red plush curtains. Their act was over: the elephants werc on. Nurdo's smile vanishcd as he walkc moodily past the lions' cages.
She asked him, timidly: "Are you hungry?^"
"I am going out for supper. Into the town."
"Shall I come?"
"No." . , ,
She thought that it was best to leave him, and waited about in the horse-tent until he should have changed and gone. Her feeling of triumph had vanished. She feit weary and dejected. She sat down on a bale of hay while the two Swedish equestrians, dazzling in their armor of gilded spangles, adjusted with much argument the girths of a vast piebald horse. Then she put on her shawl and



47
set ofï in the direction of Nurdo's wagon. He had gone, leaving behind him a scene of disorder; his tights and trunks lay scattered on the floor and a torn rag, stained and daubed with grease-paint, hung over the back of their one chair. Mechanically she put these objects in their places. She had left the door open, pining for fresh air, and occasional passers-by, devoured by curiosity, peeped in from time to time to comment upon the strangeness of a house on wheels. She was accustomed after six months of the circus, to this lack of privacy, but she was none the less surprised when one of the intruders, knocking pompously upon the door, asked in French whether he might speak to her for a moment.
"What is it?" she wanted to know.
She had learned to speak French correctly but rather painfully, and was still shy of carrying on a conversation in this language. She was even more embarrassed when she perceived that her visitor was what in Kennington would have been known as a "swell." He was elderly, with gray hair, an aquiline face and a small gray beard. He was most correctly attired in evening-dress. His cloak had a red lining and he carried a cane.
Paulina stared at him apprehensively. No previous experience of her varied life had in any way equipped her for dealing with so aristocratic-looking a person, and she was immensely awed. The swell took off his hat.
"Forgive me, Mademoiselle, for disturbing you in this manner, but I tried to catch you after your performance, and was unfortunately too late. May I speak to you for five minutes?"
Paulina had an inspiration. This, obviously, must be a circus agent de luxe. And Nurdo had vanished! She smiled, trying to look as though such visits were a commonplace occurrence in their life. She said, ceremoniously:
"Will you please come in and take a seat?"



Chapter 7
The elderly gentleman obeyed. He entered the wagon cautiously, divesting himself of exquisitely white kid gloves. His cane, she noticed, had a jeweled top. His aquiline face was thin and tired. Never, never before had she seen a swell at close quarters. This one, she decided, approximated closely to her ideas of a foreign count. She particularly admired the white gardenia in his buttonhole. She brought forward their one chair.
"This is weak in one leg, but I think it will be all right if you sit down carefully."
"Then I shall be very careful, I assure you."
And he smiled at her, adding, as he took his seat gingerly: "I do not think this encounter is to be as formidable as I supposed. Why, you are only a little girl!"
"I am fifteen and a bit," she told him impressively.
"Ah, I understand. Not, of course, a little girl, but a young lady. Is that better? And, forgive me, but I see you are not French. Would you prefer it if we talked in German, or English?"
"English," Paulina said hastily.
"Then you are English? Is it possible? I can only confess to you, Mademoiselle, that the older I grow, the more facilement je me trompe. Now I would have sworn that you were perhaps Italian, perhaps Hungarian, perhaps (although that is less likely) Russian, like myself. But English! No, never would I have guessed you to be of that nationality. Never. Never."
And he shook his head with so much vehemence that Paulina began to think him excessively peculiar. She began, with some hesitation:
48



"Did you want to see Nurdo?"
"Nurdo?"
"Yes. My—my partner. The juggler."
"Ah, the juggler! No, Mademoiselle, I came here entirely to see you and to offer you my congratulations."
She looked at him with so much astonishment that he explained :
"I am an old man now, Mademoiselle, and there are not many pleasures left to me. Therefore, when the circus comes here I invariably visit it. It is as much a treat to me as it would be to my grandson, if I had one. The clowns make me laugh, and then I feel ten years younger. But to-night I forgot all about the clowns, for I saw you dance, and I feit that I must visit you and congratulate you on your talent. If I had flowers, I would lay them at your feet, as is the custom of my country. Perhaps you will permit me to send you a bouquet to-morrow?"
She thanked him, still looking dazed.
"But forgive me; am I keeping you from your supper?"
"Oh, please don't worry about that. I can eat it any time—now, if you won't think me inhospitable not to offer you some, but the fact is, there is nothing very— very nice. Only some bread and butter and cold sausage."
She was hungry enough after saying this to sit straight down on the little stool and attack her supper with a hearty appetite. She reflected as she ate, that the swell was not so terrifying after all, and she smiled at him shyly over her mug of coffee. Perhaps, she thought, he had nothing more to say to her, but had sincerely called to congratulate her on her dancing. Her heart warmed to him. She said, to make conversation:
"So you are Russian? We have a Russian rider with us at the moment—a Cossack. Perhaps you saw him this evening?"



But the elderly gentleman, who was watching her gravely, took no notice of this remark. Instead he asked her a question:
"You have been trained as a dancer, I see?"
"Yes." She drank another draft of coffee, and explained: "In London. At the school of an old Italian lady who was once herself a ballerina. I was there for about eight years."
"But, Mademoiselle, you ought really to be scolded! What are you doing dans cette galère-ci?"
"In the circus? But I told you—I am here with my partner."
"But it is no place for you!" Here the gentleman leaned forward and spoke so emphatically that Paulina began to feel quite guilty, although she had no idea whatsoever whether his objection to her present occupation was based on moral or esthetic grounds.
There was nothing else to do, she explained defensively, but he would have none of this.
"At fifteen you teil me that! Do you know it is really shameful? At your age you should be working, slaving, training rigorously every day for your début as a ballerina! You should be at the bar two, three, four hours every morning. You should have no other aim in life, no other idea in your head. But to posture as you are doing in a circus-ring, straining your muscles, distorting your joints, by performing vulgar acrobatics for a gaping crowd, that, I assure you, my child, is a melancholy spectacle, and one that indeed brings tears to my eyes!"
And as if to emphasize the truth of this last remark he blew his nose violently. He added, shaking his head: "And so many faults! Could they ever be corrected,
one asks oneself?"
Paulina, to whom this conversation brought back all too vivid memories of Madame Vanessi, here stared at



him so indignantly that he leaned forward, patted her hand and said in a gentier tone of voice:
"You must forgive me, Mademoiselle, for speaking warmly. I behave like one of your bears here at the circus, when it has a bad head. I can only apologize. But at the same time I must explain that watching you dance to-night has brought back to me strange memories of the past, and I have been much moved. You have such promise, I think that you are a natural dancer, and it breaks my heart to see you capering in a circus-ring when I know that you should be at school in Milan learning the rudiments of your profession. At fifteen to perform at all in public is very bad, but to debase yourself by giving the performance you give, that is worse than very bad. That is shocking! Teil me, my child, would your parents not permit you to train for the ballet?"
"I haven't any parents," she said, "my mother is dead and I left my father some time ago."
"But surely you are not alone here?"
"Alone? No. I am with my partner, the juggler."
"Ah, the juggler! It is extraordinary how easily I forget that man! Such a fine fellow, too." He looked at her slyly and added: "And you would of course miss the juggler more than life itself if ever you left him?"
"I don't think so," she began and was perplexed to find how vague, how difficult to define were her exact feelings toward Nurdo. She explained af ter a pause:
"No, I don't think that I would miss him. But all the same I could not leave him. Not perhaps because I love him so very much, but because we have grown accustomed to each other, and I know his ways. And he has not been very well lately. He needs some one to look after him."
"I see." And the elderly gentleman nodded his head in a very knowing fashion.



"But," Paulina continued, anxious to make this puzzling relationship clear in her own mind, "I am quite sure that I don't love Nurdo. Not, at least, in the way that he used to love me. I think if he had been my brother I might have loved him very much, but not as things are. Do you really understand? And I can't leave him. For one reason, he wouldn't let me go."
"I see," the visitor repeated again, and rose from his chair, picking up his hat and gloves. He remarked, on
his way to the door:
"My poor little girl, you must permit an old man to give you a word of advice bef ore he goes. It is this: if you wish ever to become a serious dancer you must be content to live for many years like a nun. No more jugglers, no more complicated and altruistic relationships with black-eyed gentlemen who require looking af ter. A dancer lives, not for that purpose, but for her art. Uniquely and solely for her art. When she has developed into a prima ballerina then, perhaps, a few kisses, a few flirtations, a few supper-parties are permitted, always providing that they do not interfere with her art. But nothing serious. Above all, nothing, or nobody, that needs looking after. A dancer must look after herself.
Paulina asked humbly: "Shall I never be a dancer if
I stay with the circus?"
"With the circus and the juggler? Jamais de la viel And it is a pity, for I think you have promise."
She followed him to the door. "Who are you?" ^
"Ah!" He turned back, one foot on the ladder, "I had forgotten. Here is my card. You will see that I live in Bruges. If ever you repent of your acrobatics and want sincerely to forsake them, you must write to me, and I will try to help you, for I think that you may be worth
helping. Good night." .
He was gone. She examined the card, which mformed



53
her that Monsieur Stanislas Rosing inhabited a house in the quai des Augustins. But Paulina had never heard of Stanislas Rosing, for the simple reason that the pupils of Madame Vanessi had always been more preoccupied with their own immediate and precarious future than with the past glories of their profession.
She undressed, propping the card before her eyes; without it she would have been certain that she had dreamed this strange adventure. Even with the card she could not be quite sure. Pulling on her nightgown, she began to brush her hair. Then suddenly she smiled.
For the first time in her life some one (and a swell at that) had discovered in her dancing something admirable. He had taken the trouble to offer her his congratulations in person, he had scarcely seemed even to notice the performance of Nurdo the splendid. She reflected. Of course she could never leave Nurdo! Nurdo had been kind to her in his strange and rather selfish way; he had delivered her from the fog and slavery of Kennington; of late he had been ill and unhappy. Of course she could never leave him. She got into bed.
Now that she had sacrificed something for Nurdo, something tangible, something that she could understand, she was nearer to loving him than she had ever been. She would never, now, become a ballerina. She would remain what Monsieur Rosing had called a "vulgar acrobat." She lay very still in bed with her dark hair spread upon the pillow and her hands folded on her breast.
She shut her eyes and wished with all her heart for her lover to return. She would not be happy until she had reassured herself that he was an artist, not a vulgar acrobat; yet she knew that she would not really be reassuring herself. She would be reassuring Nurdo.
And she wondered, before she slept, whether she would ever have become a prima ballerina.



Chapter 8
Paulina slept while church clocks tolled out the passing of the night and the moon, riding high above their spires, cast upon the town a still and frozen radiance, that streamed upon the dark canals until they were canals no longer, but winding pathways of light, crazy, glittering pathways leading to the sky. Against so much brightness huddled twisted chimneys, roofs and gables somber as ogres. The night was nearly over.
Paulina turned, smiling, on her pillow, fragile as white coral against the shadow of her hair. Half-awake she whispered, "Nurdo," and he, opening the wagon-door softly, stood still on the threshold, a black and carven shape in the clearness of the moonlight.
"Nurdo!" she said again. Sitting up in bed she pushed her hair out of her eyes and remembered that she was to begin loving him that very night. She wished that she were not so sleepy. She blinked at him.
"Where have you been?"
He closed the door behind him and came across to her, walking very slowly, staring at her fixedly. He sat down beside her on the bed.
"You're shivering. I hope you have not caught cold?"
Still gazing at her as though he were intent upon some hypnotic experiment, he groped for the candle, lighted it and thrust it close to her face, which looked wan enough in this little dancing circle of light. She put her hands before her eyes. He muttered, so that she could scarcely understand what he was saying.
"What is it?" she wanted to know. "What's the matter? Are you ill?"
54



He said sullenly: "You are a bad girl. When I am away you have a man here. Yes, I have found that out. You give me the money you got from him, do you hear?"
This accusation seemed to her monstrous. She was tired and wanted to go to sleep. "You are silly," she told him derisively. "Have you really waked me up because you think that? I suppose you have been with the Cossack, who makes up lies like that about every one?"
Nurdo repeated: "You give me the money the man gave you."
"There is no money. And the man was a swell, and old, too, and he called me 'Mademoiselle' and came to teil me he liked my dancing. There! I think he must have belonged to the ballet once upon a time. And I was going to teil you about him if you'd given me time. And now I want to go to sleep."
She was by this time much aggrieved, and had quite forgotten how much she was going to love Nurdo when he came back. She tried to push him away.
"Do you hear, Lina? The money! Or else I shall hurt you."
He caught her shoulders and began to shake her.
"Oh, go away!" she exclaimed, and slapped his face as hard as she could.
He retaliated by pulling her out of bed and boring her ears. When she bit his leg he seized his magie wand and began to beat her. She screamed and tried to escape by catching hold of the dresser, which immediately collapsed, scattering them both with crashing china. By this time the pandemonium was appalling, and Nurdo, raving and cursing at the top of his voice, had begun to strangle his partner. Fortunately he was interrupted by the night watchman, a Chinese conjurer and one of the clowns, all of whom had a great deal to say in three different languages.



By the time they had shouted abuse at one another for five minutes, several other circus people, all in different stages of undress, had joined the party, and an even brisker discussion ensued, during the course of which some took Nurdo's side and others Paulina's, although every one was united in complaining of the disturbance they had created. Nurdo, white and shivering with fury, pointed dramatically at his love and announced that he refused to keep her with him a moment longer.
"Out! Get out! Go back to the slums where I found you! But if I ever see you here again I shall kill you! I shall cut your throat."
"I hate you," declared Paulina, crying with rage, "and you're nothing but a vulgar acrobat. I have never loved you, and I wish that I had never run away with you."
And so, with a tremendous theatrical flourish, they were torn away from each other while half the circus stood by to chatter and scream advice. Paulina, still in her nightgown, was thrust precipitately down the steps of the wagon, while Nurdo, by this time brandishing an enormous knife, proceeded to hurl her garments after her.
"Out! Out! Putain! Bad girl, out!"
"I want to gol I teil you I hate you!" she screamed, stamping her foot. She was like her mother then, although she did not know it. She turned, sobbing, to the clown's wife, who had never stopped repeating that there were faults on both sides. The clown's wife was not particularly sympathetic.
"You can dress yourself in our wagon, but you can't sleep there. I don't want that madman following you. And there is no room."
So she dressed in the clown's wagon and wandered out to the circus lot in her merino dress, calm now, but with tears still glistening on her cheeks. The circus people had gone back to bed, and Nurdo had barred his door.



She retrieved a petticoat and a pair of pantalettes from the steps of the caravan, and then went dejectedly toward the horse-tent.
It was dawn and the moon was pale. One great bar of pearly light streaked the sky. Inside the tent a row of long, serious, equine faces stared at her inquiringly, and there was a sound of munching hay. Paulina began to cry again. Chocolat, the Dancing Horse, thrust out his nose and uttered a soft consoling whinny. She was so much touched by this evidence of sympathy that acting on a sudden impulse she crept furtively into his stall. Here it was warm, and smelled sweet, and the straw was like a nest. Paulina stopped crying and immediately feil asleep, one arm clinging to Chocolat's fetlock. He was wise, and stood still like a rock, only occasionally bending his head to blow through his nostrils with a sound indicative of the greatest possible astonishment.
Once more the circus slept.
She was roused in the morning by the sound of a pail clinking and some one whistling at the far end of the horsetent. She lay for a moment dazed, trying in vain to remember what tremendous upheaval accounted for her presence there in the straw beside the Dancing Horse. Gradually and sorrowfully she recollected the events of the night before. Nurdo, so contemptuous of sacrifices, had finished with her for ever. She sat up, brushed straws from her hair, yawned and climbed to her feet. She feit stiff and hungry. She peeped out of the stall and saw that the groom had disappeared. She now feit rather sorry to be leaving Chocolat, and kissed this excellent horse upon the nose before venturing out into the tent itself. It was still early; beside a pile of plumed harness dangling from a hook she perceived a bucket containing hunches of bread that would later in the day be offered to the horses as bribes for performing their tricks in the ring.



Paulina snatched a handful of crusts and made ne escape from the tent, eating slowly, for the bread was very stale. Outside on the pitch the wagon doors were still shut fast and no one stirred. She paused byNu^ van and reflected without emotion that she looked upon it for the last time; those red wheels, picked out in gilt had borne her for six months along the winding roads of many strange and distant lands; now she had aone with them and they with her. She recollected, still munching, how badly the wagon had jolted, shaking her so tha at night she could not sleep; she recollected1 how cold they had been in the Carpathians, when she had waked every morning to find the water frozen in their basins, so that there had been no hot tea, and Nurdo had sworn at her And yet sometimes, she reflected, the van had been pleasant enough. She remembered howinwarmweath Nurdo had rigged up an awmng over the little porch, so that it had been delightful to sit there between shows, idly dreaming, watching in the distance the duskyftrgroves of a German forest or the vivid sky-washed mirror
nf somc tremulous It&licin l&k-C.
Since she left Kennington she had seen much beauty and some ugliness; she had tramped the world with nomads collected from all the four corners o the ear and had been the slave of a juggler who valued her it seemed, not at all, certainly not so much as his comrade of the ring valued their performing animals.
Now it was finished, and when the circus passed on to the next town she would be left behind. Everything eïse would be the same in Ghent; even Nurdo wonld not miK her very mueh, sinee he eoold perfectly well g.ve his performance without her, and the gay glittermg swarm of other "acts" would, she knew, have forgotten m a few davs that Lina the dancer had ever existed as a part, however insignificant, of their complicated circus machine.



There were so many new faces always on the road; why suppose that hers should be more vivid than the rest?
As she turned away, humbled by these inevitable reflections, she realized that her future memories of the Cirque Rambert would not include beauties of scenery, hardships of the road, the gay pageantry of the show or even the strange half-resentful love of Nurdo the juggler. No. Whenever she heard the name of the Cirque Rambert she would think instinctively, enviously, of the steaming vegetable soup ladled out to the members of the company on Saturday nights. And she wished fervently for a bowl of this soup, for she was by this time very hungry indeed.
She walked away, quite forgetting her belongings, which were still presumably scattered all over the circus.
"After all," she said to herself, "I was always the stupid one of the troupe. I had no talent for that sort of thing. What has a dancer to do with acrobats?"



Chapter 9
Monsieur Stanislas Rosing was fast asleep, and drearning very agreeably of the many things in life that still held interest for him, when his excellent housekeeper, Justine, after a preliminary tap upon the door, entered the room with his can of hot water. _
Monsieur Rosing sighed and stirred: he was m the midst of a particularly pleasant dream during the course of which he was young once more, and strong, and loved by women who paid homage to him because he was a greatartist, and they were proud to kiss his hand. Surely, surely, he could have been left in peace a moment longer! He turned on his side, uttering a stifled sound of protest, then as sleep began so swiftly to elude him, he immediately became conscious that Justine, once agam,
had chosen to disobey him. <
He sat up in bed like an angry lion, his nightcap cocked
over one eye. "Justine!"
"Monsieur?"
Justine's face and voice were completely devoid ot
all expression. . .
"How many times," Rosing demanded, his voice shaking with anger, "how many times, woman, must I forbid you to enter my room in the morning wearing those noisy and abominable clogs? Where are your feit slippers? Where, indeed, are your manners, your docility, your attentiveness to all my wishes? Do not let me have to
mention this matter again!"
Justine answered stolidly: "I put on my clogs expres. "You dare to stand there admitting that you disobey
me on purpose?"
60



Justine was unmoved.
"Yes, Monsieur. In the feit slippers, I can never be sure of waking Monsieur. I wished particularly to wake Monsieur this morning. So I put on my clogs. I am sorry if it gives offense."
"But most assuredly it gives offense!" Rosing explained crossly. He added, beneath his breath: "Furthermore, it is unreasonable to suggest that I am a heavy sleeper. I am a remarkably light sleeper. Don't let this occur again, or I shall be extremely displeased."
"No, Monsieur," said Justine. She remained standing patiently by his bed, so that at length he asked her, curtly enough, what it was that she wanted of him.
She began, laboriously: "It is already nine o'clock.
"What of it? What if it is ten, eleven, or even twelve o'clock?"
"For more than an hour," pursued Justine, "there has been in the kitchen a young girl, whom I, personally, suppose to be a traveling gipsy. Impossible, Monsieur, to be rid of her. She will not go."
"How does she come to be in the kitchen?"
"Ah, that I can very easily explain. Before eight, this young person knocked. I admitted her, supposing her to be the milk. She was not the milk. But she walked into the kitchen."
"What has all this to do with me?" Rosing not unreasonably demanded.
"Monsieur will not allow me to finish! The young girl asked for Monsieur. I naturally replied that Monsieur was asleep in bed, but that in any case he was not in the habit of receiving vagrants in his home. Upon which the young girl shook her head, replying that Monsieur had invited her to visit him whenever she desired. She then, saying she was hungry, offered to teil the bonne aventure both to Marie and myself, in return for breakfast."



"Ah! And then?"
"I took the liberty, Monsieur, of giving her a roll and some coffee, after which I told her that I was a good Christian, and, as such, have no use for witchcraft. I also forbade Marie to tamper with such matters. As for the young person, when she had finished her breakfast, I bade her be off."
"And then?"
"She refused, Monsieur. She clung to her chair, twisted her feet around the legs, and declared she could not, and would not, leave the house without seeing Monsieur. And that is the situation. She is still in the kitchen."
"Ah!" said Rosing again. He removed his nightcap, and ran his fingers through his hair, observïng, partly to himself; "Then she has left her juggler after all. Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, what a situation!"
"Pardon, Monsieur?" said Justine politely.
"If I were only not so impulsive!" he groaned. "Really, really, sometimes I am not fit to go about alone!"
Here he waited for Justine to protest, but as she said nothing, he continued, "Of all the ridiculous situations! But she must go back, she must go back at once to her circus!"
"The circus?" interrupted Justine. "But the circus is moving on to-day. The circus is going to Ghent."
"Bring my bath in at once, Justine," he commanded. "And put the petït déjeuner down-stairs in the salon. Meanwhile, offer the young girl some more coffee. Poor child, poor child! And it is all my fault! Yes, most certainly I am to blame!"
He bathed and dressed himself with his usual extreme care, reflecting aloud:
"I am a meddlesome, mischievous and officious old man! Now I have succeeded in making that child, that poor little drudge of a third-rate juggler, thoroughly dis-



satisfied with her lot in life! And all to no purpose. Already, no doubt, the poor gosse sees herself as a ballerina. One must be kind, but one must also be firm . . . perhaps a little present . . . and yet, I think she has talent ... but what can I do? I am old, finished, I no longer have power. Who, nowadays, listens to Rosing?"
He tied his cravat.
When he descended into the little salon he was slightly consoled by the sight of his breakfast, the fresh snowy rolls, the delicious butter, the foaming coffee. In spite of her obstinacy, Justine was undoubtedly a treasure.
He opened his letters. One was a business letter from an acquaintance in Brussels, the other, over which he dallied longer, a long epistle in Russian from an old friend, a retired ballerina who lived in Moscow.
"I still rusticate," wrote the lady. "And dream of the past splendors we both have loved so well. ... I have grown fat, and have a cow, and feed my chickens .. . there are no dancers here to compare with our giants of the past. . . . Marie set the fashion for Italian ballerinas and now one hears of nothing but the prodigies of Milan ... are they so very famous, teil me? And when will a great star flame once more in our own country? Surely Italy should breed singers, not dancers? . . . everything seems upside down . . . personally I always disliked Italians." And so on, for many pages.
Rosing thought, sipping his coffee: "She might have thrown me one small bouquet—she doesn't neglect to mention herself. But it's as I have said. Rosing is quite forgotten. There might never have been a Rosing."
He stirred the fire, toying with the idea of flinging his letter into its ruby heat. But he thought better of it. It was so seldom that he heard from Russia.
Justine came in, making him start, for she had at last consented to don her feit slippers. He turned round,



half prepared to scold her for stealing about the house like a cat, but then he remembered that this would have been inconsistent. He said instead:
"And the little gipsy? Is she still practising witchcraft in the kitchen?"
"Yes, Monsieur."
"You had better send her to me."
Justine vanished with alacrity.
He lighted a cigar and walked up and down the room, thinking to himself:
"Already they are on the point of forgetting Marie. Fanny will be the next, and then will come the turn of the actress, Rachel. Why do any of us ever try to please the public? They are ungrateful, and we expect gratitude, and that is very foolish of us, for it hurts to be disappointed in those we think our friends."
These melancholy reflections were cut short by the appearance of Paulina, who was most dramatically ushered into the room by Justine.
"La voila! What did I teil Monsieur? Isn't it a vraie bohémienne?"
"I see no reason to suppose so," Rosing told her coldly. He was beginning once again to feel sorry for Paulina, because she was small and pale, and had no bonnet and presented such a bedraggled appearance. He tried to suppress these feelings of sympathy, knowing from sad experience how far astray they were apt to lead him, and when he had waved Justine imperiously from the room, he wished that he had done no such thing. She would probably have checked any signs of foolishness on his part. But she had gone, and so he smiled at Paulina and asked her to sit down.
She obeyed, staring in a daze at the room, which was the finest she had ever seen, as she at once proceeded to explain to her host.



"No doubt, no doubt," Rosing murmured soothingly. He waited, trying not to look too encouraging.
Paulina wrenched her eyes away from a cabinet filled with fans and china statuettes to ask rather timidly:
"Could you please teil me if it is possible to study dancing if you have no money at all?"
He answered evasively that it was very difficult indeed to do anything in the world unless you had at least a little money.
"Then," said Paulina, "whatever am I to do? You see, I have no money, not even a sou."
This did not in the least surprise Rosing. He asked her what had become of the juggler.
"Nurdo? Oh, I forgot to explain; you must think it very odd. I have left him."
Rosing said sadly: "I alone am to blame."
"Oh, no, indeed you're not," she told him. "It was nothing whatever to do with you, at least nothing to do with what you said to me last night."
This surprised him. "Then, why?"
He came back afterward and was very angry because you had been to see me in the wagon. He made a scene. Then he grew wilder and beat me, and tried to strangle me "
"But this is monstrous!"
"And then he threw me out of the wagon and threw all my clothes after me. So I slept in the straw with the horses. And this morning I came to you."
She told this story simply, and gave him an anxious smile when she had finished it. But he was stunned, and held his head in his hands. This was what came of interfering! Never, never again would he interferel
"Come with me. We will go straight to the circus and explain matters to your juggler. He shall take you back. More, he shall apologize!"



Chapter 10
"No, no," Paulina protested. "You don't understand. I will 'never go back to him. I don't like lnm any more and I'm af raid of him. Next time he will assuredly kill
me." . i , -n
"But my poor child, if you leave the circus, what wüi
you do? How will you earn your bread;
She said confidingly: "I shall be a dancer, as you told
me last night."
He was silent. This was more awful even than he had supposed. He muttered something incoherent to the effect that there was no vacancy at the school in Milan. He added, as she stared at him incredulously:
"And this juggler, this poor fellow who no doubt loves you in his own primitive fashion, are you really preparea to abandon him in this impetuous way?"
She burst into tears, and feil on her knees before him. "I can never go back to Nurdo! I am so af raid of hirrü And he doesn't love me any more, please believe that!"
Rosing again began to walk up and down the room. Paulina continued to sob. At last he turned to her and pointed to a portrait that hung abovetfie mantelpiece. "Look, my child, do you see that picture?"
Paulina looked, blinking through her tears. The portrait, which was painted in oils, represented an oliveskinned young man in fantastic eighteenth-century costume, and silver peruke, who postured daintily, one mincing foot thrust before the other.
"A dancer," she commented, her voice choked with
"Yes, a dancer. Rosing. Myself, when I danced in
66



St. Petersburg, when I partnered Istomina, appearing time after time before the Tsar."
"I never knew," she told him, her tears now arrested, "that you had ever been a dancer."
Rosing said bitterly, forgetting his present difficulties: "That does not surprise me. Look, I seem old now, and look old, and yet I am only fifty-eight. Twenty years ago I retired; a dancer's life is short. Years of training, years of discipline, years of privation, all for a few brief years of triumph and fame. And, after that, so many more years of oblivion. Who remembers me now? No one. It is all over and done with. And yet you say you want to be a dancer. In God's name, why?"
She was silent. He continued, speaking more to himself than to her:
"You are better off in your circus. I did wrong ever to teil you the contrary. If I were a clown, I could still be a clown at fifty-eight. If I were an actor, I could still be acting. But because I am a dancer, my day is finished, and has been for twenty years. Once, it is true, I taught, but that was poor consolation. And then my sister died. She was a widow; her husband had been comfortably situated. She left me her money, and I settled down here. I have been here for ten years. I shall die here, a lonely, disappointed, forgotten old man. Such are dancers."
He blew his nose.
But Paulina, still kneeling on the hearth-rug, looked at him with so much joy upon her face that he thought his English must have grown so rusty that she had misunderstood him.
She said eagerly, stretching out her hands: "Teach me! Oh, please teach me!"
Afterward, when he looked back upon that morning, he admitted to himself that with those first impulsive words



of hers it was as though some one, turning a secret key in his heart, had opened there a door that had been long shut. And with the opening of that door there came a ray of blinding light. He was old, and desolate, and sick at heart because his work was done. Here was a child, thrown upon the world entirely through his own foolishness, a child in whom he had thought to discern signs of real talent. Whynot? Why not? It would be an experiment that might very easily fail, yet, if it failed, no one would be the wiser. And if it succeeded . . . ? His heart beat faster. He turned toward the fire, screening his face.
"My dear child . . . such nonsense. . . . You must put these ideas out of your head."
She repeated, clasping her hands: "Oh, please teach me! I'll work hard, so hard. And when I am a ballerina, earning money, then I can pay you back. And I can dance, I know I can, although I have never before been properly taught. Why, my mother, in London, was a ballet-girl "
Rosing interrupted.
"Was she also English, your mother?"
She frowned, trying to recollect such scraps of knowledge as came to her vaguely from a past already grown dim. She at length produced: "My mother was Jewish. I have heard my father say so."
"Ah!"
Rosing was pleased. He looked at her again. Of course, Jewish—that pointed vivid face and mobile mouth and fine dark eyes. Jewish and Cockney. A strange mixture, one no doubt temperamental and industrious, and that was very good indeed. He turned to Paulina.
"Your idea is fantastic, but you can stay here for a few days and we will see you dance. More than that I can not promise."



69
She stared at him, radiant, speechless. He had thought her plain before, but now, if she could always look like that, there was a fire, a sweetness, in her face that might or might not signify deeply emotional qualities. He was anxious to try her further.
"And the juggler, Mademoiselle Lina? The poor juggler ? If you desert him in this peremptory way will you really have no regrets?"
She said, her eyes fixed full on him: "Nurdo? I told you I had finished with Nurdo. I will never think of him again. I am going to be a dancer."
And she looked then, like some ardent novice in a convent.
"This," he thought, "is excellent. She is probably more spiritual than sexual. She will never run off, this one, for the first handsome young man she sees. And she is fifteen. I have caught her young enough, if she has really been trained since she was a baby."
He rubbed his hands.
"Now teil me something of this teaching at the London school."
While she talked he slipped his hands into his pockets and remembered the letter from the old dancer in Petrograd. One sentence flashed across his mind, "When will a great star flame once more in our country?" He thought, half dazed by his own idea:
"W hy not? Again, why not? She is not English; she's half Jewish. If she has the talent I hope for, she shall learn Russian—I shall teach her! She shall put these Italian women in the background once and for all—yes, and the Austrian, too! And she shall be my creation, the creation, the life-work, of Stanislas Rosing! They'11 remember me then, when I produce this young star from nowhere! Russian—I'll make her Russian, just as I'll make her dance! And she shall dance, if I kill her in



the attempt. And by whatever name I may call her, and however famous she may make that name, the name of Rosing shall go always with her, tied irrevocably to hers, so that she will never escape it, and with her, through her, I shall live again in the history of the Ballet!"
This sudden enthusiasm, so typical of him, was as usual succeeded by a burst of melancholy. He reflected abruptly:
"Why excite myself in this ridiculous fashion? What do I know about her? Nothing. She is a little slut that I see dancing with great vulgarity, yet with a certain promise, in a third-rate cirque ambulant. She may be incapable of any groundwork. Her faults may be too deep-rooted ever to eradicate. The juggler may whistle her away. Anything may happen. I am an old fooi."
He sighed, and looked so sad that Paulina, who was beginning to feel sleepy, feit quite sorry for him. She
said consolingly:
"Please, please, don't change your mind. As well as learning to dance, there are so many things that I could do for you. I waited on Nurdo hand and foot. I'll do anything for you, because you have been so good to me. Would you like to be my lover, as he was?"
She was, after all, only a little animal. She had everything to learn, and she seemed willing to learn it.
"Nurdo," he told her, "is by no means typical of all men. You mustn't get these ideas into your head. You are very young, and if you are to be a serious dancer, as X told you last night, you will have no time for lovers. Is that quite understood?"
"But of course it is!" She hesitated, and added: "I don't want—I am not in love with any one!
"A la bonne heure!" He wished to change the subject and inquired: "You haven't yet told me your full name. What is it?"



"Paulina Varley. But they call me Lina."
"Lina is pretty, but the other I find most horrible." Forgetting that he did not yet wish her to know that he had decided to keep her, he exclaimed: "From now on you shall be Lina. And we will find for you another name, one more suited to a dancer 1"
Looking back on that morning she thought afterward that Paulina Varley must have died there and then, in Rosing's salon in the quai des Augustins, for never afterward, anywhere in her presence, was that name ever to be pronounced again.
For the present she was Lina, a serious student of the dance.







Part Two BALLET BY CANDLELIGHT







C hapt er 11
The house of Monsieur Stanislas Rosing in the quai des Augustins had attracted him from the first because it represented, with its wide entrance and courtyard upon which its inner windows look down, the finest, most dignified type of Flemish architecture. There, ten years ago, he had come to rest after much wandering on the face of the globe, and there he had brought with him a curious assembly of treasures collected by him in his younger days.
Inside, the house was a strange mixture of the conventional and the exotic. The pretty Watteau-esque ballets so popular in his prime had not unnaturally made him feel at home among the delicate ornate furniture of this period, which furthermore provided a suitable background for two large portraits, one of Camargo and one of Noverre, the famous maitre de ballet of the Duke of Wurttemberg. He collected fans, Dresden china, and Amsterdam toys in silver, of which he had about five hundred. In another cabinet were a dozen worn pink ballet shoes, souvenirs of the great ballerinas with whom he had danced so many years ago.
But Rosing was not content either with personal souvenirs or with the pretty fragilities of the eighteenth century. He had flung rich somber Flemish tapestries upon his walls to glow there with a dark bloom that made the rooms seem warm in the dampest weather, he had collected three or four fine austere Dutch pictures, and the Russian in him had encouraged the gradual acquisition of one exotic ikon after another.
They hung, these ikons, like a blaze of rich jewels
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above the mantelpiece in the little salon. There were more than a hundred of them, great and small, pale ovalfaced Virgins in robes of solid gold and silver stiff with gems, remote and cold, Lina sometimes thought, for all their brightness, the strange saints of a far-away, fantastic land. Rosing, who was religious whenever it occurred to him, which was not often, gave his pupil one of these ikons to hang in the corner of her bedroom with a taper burning beneath it. He loved his ikons; they brought back to him the very scent of Russia.
The house, for all its confusion, had a curious and genial charm. lts windows looked over the deep darkness of a wide canal on which floated swans like pale birds of fairy; behind lay a crumbling bridge, a shady chestnut tree, the mossy gables of old houses just opposite, and the spires of an ancient hoary church much frequented by beggars, old maids and stray cats.
Every one in Bruges seemed elderly, pious, secretive and wrinkled. If youth existed at all in the town, youth must have stifled.
Rosing had a few friends, all older than himself. The Doctor Silvercroys, Vanderkerk, his lawyer, Paul Martens, an unsuccessful and embittered painter. They dined with him at six o'clock, the fashionable Bruges hour, at least once a fortnight. It was not long before these cronies discovered that "the Russian" kept a young girl concealed in his house, and that they suspected a liaison was of course inevitable. Rosing, when questioned, smiled enigmatically.
"The demoiselle of whom you speak is my pupil."
And that was all. Nor were they allowed to see the young lady for themselves. Like Cinderella, she was sternly, and as though by magie, banished from their presence. Rosing once condescended to explain her absence.
"My pupil is young, modest, innocent. Your grossness,



my friends, would only affront her ears of pensionnaire, could she understand you, which as yet she can not do. She is a child of my own country."
"Is she beautiful?" Paul Martens wanted to know.
"Ah, beautiful ... !" Rosing held up his hands in protest. "Who can ever prophesy what will happen to the chrysalis? She is a mere baby, a gosse, and in no way remarkable. As to the future, I can not say."
With this they had to be content. But the butcher's boy informed Doctor Silvercroys that early, oh, very early in the morning the piano tinkled in Rosing's big salon and then a young lady might be observed dancing like a fairy before the big mirror, a very young lady in skirts so short that is was quite possible even from outside, to observe the entrancing shape of her legs.
Doctor Silvercroys was so ashamed of the source of his information that he dared not confide in his friends, but this diffidence did not prevent him from stalking outside the salon window the very next morning. Alas! surely there were spies in the house of his good friend, Rosing; the piano tinkled, it is true, but the shutters were fast, and all was desolate, for the fairy danced by candlelight.
"These inquisitive fellows!" Rosing muttered to himself. "They shan't surprise my secret—no one shall guess that, no, not even when I myself am sure."
And as yet he was by no means sure.
As for his pupil, Lina, she soon began to think this new life harder even than the circus. True, she had plenty to eat, a room to herself and pretty dresses to wear, but on the other hand there were the interminable lessons of Rosing, who worked her like a slave. Unlike Madame Vanessi, he seldom screamed or lost his temper and he taught with imagination and fire, but his standards were so pure, his expectations so ambitious and his comments



so sarcastic that he was far more to be dreaded. Behind him, unsmirched, unsullied, lay outspread like some splendid flag, all the traditions of the classical ballet of Russia. This supreme mastery of technique, this fierce striving after a beauty as elusive as it was idealistic, required a rigid course of discipline almost terrifying in its ecstatic austerity.
Once again dancing became a solemn thing, a matter of routine more dreary than a soldier's drill. And then at last there came a misty winter day with a bright fire snapping in the grate and a swarm of waxen tapers clustered gaily on the piano. Rosing, in his dressinggown, one foot tapping the ground, stood by the window, his fiddle tucked against his chin, evoking the strains of Rossini; Lina faced him in tarlatan as misty as the day outside, and sighed, because she had been for two hours toiling at the bar.
"Now! Dance, improvise, anything—it doesn't matter how bad. But dance as though this were a conquest, a triumph. Use your imagination!"
Oh, to be released! The house stifled her that day. It would be pleasant, later on, when her lesson was finished, to run out to the Grande Place and buy hot chestnuts. And so she danced, for freedom, with a light and skilful grace that would no doubt have amazed Madame Vanessi. Rosing stopped playing. Lina stopped too, flushed, panting, ready for the inevitable fault-finding which always followed such improvisations.
There was a pause.
"Come here," he said.
She obeyed, convinced that she had committed some major crime. Rosing caught her arm, pulled her closer, stared into her eyes.
"What is it?"
He embraced her then, tilting her head backward the



better to kiss her on both cheeks. He had never done such a thing before. He said, his voice trembling a little:
"My dear, I was right. For the first time I am sure. You will be a dancer, perhaps a great dancer. . . . We should both be very proud of each other."
Life, at that moment, swam in a mist of roses silverthreaded with the echoes of Rossini's song, gay and sweet and filled with laughter. She smiled, but her eyes were wet, for she was much moved.
Rosing said hastily, wrenching himself away from visions as glamourous as hers: "That is, if you work harder than you have done lately. Otherwise it is useless. And now be off with you."
Long after she had run out of the house into the cold mist outside he remained alone in his dressing-gown in the brilliant room, walking up and down before the fire, muttering to himself, his face creased with smiles, the tassel of his bonnet-grec most violently agitated. She was all that he had hoped—more than he had hoped. He thought that God had been very good to him.
That afternoon he sent for her, and instead of pestering her with Russian grammar, he pulled a great album from his shelves and began to talk to her of ghosts long dead.
"Here, Lina, is the great Noverre, he who revolutionized the history of dancing by his invention of the Ballet d'Action, his revival of the true art of pantomime. . . . Here is Vestris, who christened himself le dieu de la danse. . . . Gardel . . . created a sensation in 1772 by dancing without a mask. . . . And here, more beautiful than a goddess, the immortal Camargo, of whom Voltaire wrote, before whom princes bowed, Camargo, whose every movement was a poem. . . . Look, Lina, but for Camargo you would still dance stumbling, in long skirts, for she invented the dress that ballerinas wear to-day."
And then, closing the book, he talked to her of Russia,



80
of great and brilliant theaters entirely devoted to the worship of ballet, of dancers more revered than were the pale saints of the ikons, of the present day, of Taglioni, Elssler, Grisi and Cerito. Vivid names, like notes of music. She shut her eyes and saw a long procession of ballerinas, silver-shod, more palely graceful than swans, garlanded with the dark leaves of laurel and bay, dancing correctly throughout the years, tireless, smiling, immortal.
"And now, we will talk of these Russian verbs."
"No, no! Not verbs, dancers. Please teil me more."
"What else do you want me to teil you? That a dancer must live with the austerity of a trained athlete? That a dancer must deny herself those things so essential to other women—a home, a husband, children? I have already told you that the theater must be your home, that you will in all probability have no husband, and that your children can only be the little notes of music to which you weave your steps."
And so he talked, desperately serious, all the more determined to convince this novice because he, who had lived so long, had seen too many ballerinas wrecked for love. He said, diplomatically sprinkling her powder with jam: "Later on, if you want a protector, a solid wealthy man, then take one. But your heart, that you must never lose. Never, never. Those things are not for you."
But Lina was not attracted by the idea of a protector, however solid, however wealthy. Nor, like most young girls, had she any pretty dreams of a vague, fairy-tale lover who would one day inevitably come to claim her. Nurdo had unconsciously taught her to think of love as an overrated business, and she was still too ignorant to realize that she had never loved the juggler.
She said happily: "I don't want to lose my heart. I never will. And now teil me some more, much more, about the ballet."



Chapter 12
She was sensible enough to appreciate to the full the advantages of her new position. The exquisite cleanliness of Rosing's house appealed all the more to her own fastidiousness because she had come to it straight from the squalor of Nurdo's van. The delight of wearing as many fresh underclothes as she wanted, without having to wash them herself at night when she was dead tired, was in itself a treat that endured for many weeks.
Plenty of sleep and nourishing food soon caused her to lose the half-starved look that had made her seem so delicate. She would always be slender and extremely small, but Rosing was quick to perceive that this very fragility, which gave her a fairy-like quality, was probably her greatest asset.
He thought dispassionately: "She will never really be beautiful, but she will have enough charm for people to believe that she is."
He was able, sooner than he supposed, to put this theory to the test.
She had submitted with docility to his stern decree of banishment whenever his friends came to the house, but as the months passed and she saw no one but himself, Justine and Marie, she began to resent very vigorously these almost weekly incarcerations in the solitude of her bedroom.
One night, as was so often his custom, Rosing entertained in his house Doctor Silvercroys, Vanderkerk and Paul Martens. The four men lingered a long time in the dining-room, where Rosing produced for them a precious brandy colored like the sun, that was reverently drunk
81



82
in huge goblets more delicately fashioned than giant bubbles. The dining-room was in darkness, but from the table a tall sconce of candles cast forth a trembling brilliance, so that the four gray heads, nodding so close together, glistened like silver in the glowing, wavering light that flung fantastic shadows upon the wall behind them. They looked like figures in a play.
The doctor was stout and bearded, with a loud merry laugh and a high, bald, intelligent forehead.
The lawyer, Vanderkerk, looked more like a priest. He had a smooth Jesuitical face, blanched hair and a soft musical voice.
Paul Martens was a lean hawk of a man with a hatchet face, huge hands, untidy grizzled hair and a booming laugh.
They were, as Rosing often remarked, the only intelligent men in Bruges, by which he meant that they took more interest in the artistic matters so dear to him, than in the business reports from the Bourse or the drab politics of Brussels. He understood nothing of such things and thought the excellent merchants of the town more stupid than animals.
He, to his friends, would always be "the Russian," the glamourous savage who had somehow allowed himself to be tamed, and who represented in their monotonous lives all that was vivid, colorful, exotic. He appreciated their admiration and became when in their company a more vital being than was the elderly, forgotten and disappointed artist of every day.
He said to them, laughing: "I know you think I have settled down now and never mean to stray from home, but just wait a few years, my friends, and then see if I shall have forgotten what it is to be a gipsy!"
"Do you intend to travel again, Rosing?" asked Vanderkerk in his gentle voice.



"Yes." He sipped his brandy. "Yes. That is my intention. But not for a few years, and not for pleasure when I do. No. I shall travel on business. Paris, London, Milan—perhaps America as well."
He paused, the glass still in his hand. They were not listening to him. They were not even looking at him. Their eyes were fixed upon the door. He turned his head.
The room was in darkness, but she was plainly visible, for she carried a taper in her hand and held it high above her head. She stood there facing them with an expression half mischievous, half fearful. Her face was vivid, her dark hair hung loose upon her shoulders, and she wore flesh-colored tights. This, to his mind, was the crowning insolence—even if she had come among them uninvited she might at least have worn one of the modest white muslin dresses she had made for herself with the assistance of Justine. But no. She had chosen, wickedly enough, a wisp of tulle and, most damning of all, the pink tights, still at that epoch considered objects of depravity even when graced by the ladies of the ballet. She appeared thus among his friends as a dancer, and no doubt desired to dance for them. He shouted angrily in English:
"Go away! Do you hear what I sayl Go away immediately!"
But Paul Martens climbed to his feet with dignity. "Gently, Bluebeard! Let us on no account frighten the lady. Will you not present her to your friends?"
And the doctor: "Pay no attention, Mademoiselle, to this Russian bear, but let me assure you that we, his friends, have been for many days thirsting to make your acquaintance. May I offer you a chair?"
"Thank you," said Lina.
She advanced demurely, with a placating smile at Rosing, and sat down on the extreme edge of the chair.
He continued, in English: "Do you hear what I say?



Do you wish to be removed by force? Must I ring for Justine?"
"Please let me stay for a few minutes," she supplicated. "I was so lonely, and so cold, in my room. And your friends won't eat me. Please let me stay!"
"Your costume. Your tights "
"I was practising, to keep myself warm. I never thought you would mind."
Vanderkerk interrupted. "So this," he commented, putting on his spectacles, "is the Russian fairy! I congratulate you, Rosing."
"Yes," Lina said swiftly, "I am Russian, but I speak French, and English too."
"And your name, Mademoiselle?"
"Lina. Nothing else."
"But this is charming!" And he added, being proud of his Shakespearian knowledge, "No doubt our friend Rosing discovered you in a wood near Athens?"
Every one looked blank.
Rosing at length volunteered: "Mademoiselle Lina comes from my own country. She is here to study French."
He was conscious, as he spoke, that he had by no means explained the tights, and he had furthermore a miserable recollection of having once described her as too modest, too innocent for the presumably gross company of his friends. He now perceived that Martens was offering her a glass of wine, while upon the faces of all three glittered the insinuating, rather sly expression of elderly men who are anxious to create a favorable impression upon feminine and youthful grace.
"You dance, Mademoiselle?" the doctor was asking.
"Oh, a little, Monsieur."
This was too much. He interrupted harshly: "Mademoiselle does not dance—in public."



Martens, taking no notice, inquired whether she liked wine.
"I am not quite sure," said she frankly, "for I only had it once before. That was in Budapest, with a friend of mine. It was somebody's birthday."
"Have you traveled a great deal?"
"Yes, oh, yes." And she laughed. "A very great deal."
Then, seeing Rosing's frown at the other end of the table, she leaned across, smiled, and said pleadingly:
"Please don't be angry with me, Monsieur Rosing! I promise to work extra well to-morrow."
"Then do me the favor of going to bed now!"
This created a protest so universal that he was forced to add:
"Very well, you may stay for half an hour on condition that you go away at once and dress yourself properly!"
She vanished immediately. She had gained her point.
"Mais elle est délicieuse, la gosse!" said Martens enthusiastically. He winked at the others.
Rosing looked sulky. It really seemed to him ridiculous that his friends should suspect him of having an intrigue with a girl of fifteen or sixteen. He explained as much, emphasizing once again the extreme propriety of his relations with his pupil. As he talked, he began to feel that Lina was going to be more troublesome than he had at first supposed. Perhaps he had been too ready to regard her, not as a human being, so much as a doll, to be animated only by his own superior knowledge and intelligence. He had really given her no credit for possessing a character of her own, and now that supreme gesture of defiance, the pink tights, forced him against his will to reconsider this opinion.
He drank some more coffee, and said: "In any case



86
there is no necessity for our dinner to be disturbed by a child's prank. More brandy, gentlemen?"
When they went into the salon Lina awaited them, demure as a snowdrop in her white dimity dress and frilled pantalettes. With plainly combed hair, downcast eyes, and gentle graceful movements she had become so much the jeune fille that all ribaldry immediately ceased, and the ceremonious respect with which she was treated almost reassured Rosing. In precisely half an hour she folded up her needlework, curtsied to the gentlemen, and retired without so much as a hint from her patron.
When they had left the house she reappeared, to apologize, she said.
"I am furious," Rosing told her sternly.
"Please, please forgive me! I assure you I meant no harm. But why should you mind my meeting your friends? I begin to think," she continued reproachfully, "that you must be ashamed of me."
"Like all women, you talk nonsense. I wish only for you to concentrate your mind upon your work."
"But," she objected, "seeing three old gentlemen for half an hour will not make me dance any worse tomorrow."
"It's to be hoped not! In any case, to burst uninvited upon a reunion of gentlemen, wearing pink tights for no apparent reason, must strike any educated person as a gross breach of taste."
"But I am not an educated person," said Lina.
"Qa se voit," Rosing told her irritably.
"And I assure you," she continued penitently, "that I won't misbehave myself in future. Only it is lonely sometimes when your friends are here, and Justine was cross to-night and wouldn't have me in the kitchen."
"Good, good. And now to bed with you."



She smiled. 'Tm so glad you have forgiven me."
And she kissed his hand, rubbing it gently and caressingly against the freshness of her cheek.
Rosing withdrew the hand sharpïy.
"You have no poise! Remember, you are no longer in the circus. You must try to behave better. Do you wish people to gossip about us?"
"I meant no harm."
She smiled at him again and went quietly out of the room.



' Chapter 13
Somehow, mysteriously, af ter that evening she insinuated berself into the good graces not only of Rosing's friends but of Rosing himself. She was subsequently allowed, when the dinner-parties took place, not indeed to be present at the actual festivities, but to preside afterward in the salon, serving tea, Russian-fashion, in glasses, a graceful and modest Hebe. The pink tights might never have been. And yet somehow Rosing was not quite sure. He remembered the smile she had given him on that other evening, the smile with which she bade him good night after having been rebuked for her unmaidenly behavior. A strange smile, disconcerting in its suggestion of a sly elfin wisdom to which mortal man might never attain. It was as though she read him through, knew, in that one moment, all his sad forgotten secrets. Old memories, dim yet painful, had stirred unrestfully in his deepest heart and he had recollected many things—a flame of Russian music, the white arms of a woman, even the scent that woman used, the sunburned neck of a young boy, a shy laugh, and then again the fiery music of gipsy singers, and drink, a Russian drink more fiery even than the music. But all that was long ago, and now when he looked out of his window he heard no music, saw no snow, and there was only the muted tolling of a church-bell and a rain-washed mist that blurred the panes.
It was strange, he mused, that a smile from Lina could thus evoke for him that part of a vivid brilliant life so remote, so faded, so utterly locked away in the past that he had seldom thought of it since first he came to live in Bruges.
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And then the showman in him reflected that if Lina could one day dance as she had smiled, her power would be complete.
She said to him shortly afterward: "If you have finished with me for this afternoon I said that I would go to tea with Monsieur Martens."
He said violently: "I forbid it!"
"Very well, just as you like. It doesn't matter. But he was going to show me his pictures."
"You don't understand. Martens is no friend for you— he's uncouth, immoral, no respecter of women."
"Very well," she repeated in a gentle tone of voice, "if you don't wish it of course I won't go."
He said no more, but shortly afterward Paul Martens came round to visit him.
"What have you been telling Mademoiselle Lina about me, Rosing? I hear that she is forbidden my door, on the grounds that I'm a seducer, a ruffian, no fit associate for your young innocent!"
"Where did you see Lina?"
"I met her out walking near the Grande Place this morning," said Martens frankly.
"By assignation, I suppose?"
"No, I assure you. Believe me, my friend, you are acting in a ridiculous fashion over this matter. If you suppose that I covet your Russian fairy, you are wrong, for I don't. She is too much of a baby for my taste. On the other hand, it would amuse her to visit my studio and it would amuse me to entertain her there—convenablement, g'est bien entendu. But if you keep her shut up like a young nun you will most certainly regret it, for one day the bird will fly away." He added, half to himself: "Furthermore, since we are talking of birds, I am by no means convinced that Mademoiselle is the little white goose you would have us believe."



For one moment Rosing feared that she had confided her early history to Martens. Then, remembering with relief her immense capacities for reserve, he knew that this could not be so.
"Nonsense," he said sharply.
Martens continued, serious now: "In any case, I am a lonely man, and have few pleasures. It is long since I talked to any woman more fastidious than are my models and the poules with whom I sometimes spend a dreary evening. It is not much to ask that your ewe-lamb shall be confided to me for an hour or so. Can you really not trust me?"
Rosing, like most emotional people, was subject to swift changes of opinion. He now said abruptly, gripping Martens' hand:
"My friend, I am an unreasonable old rascal, and I beg your pardon. Mademoiselle Lina shall visit you this very day, if you consent, and I shall trust her without a qualm to your own most admirable sense of honor."
"You are my friend!" Martens agreed pompously.
Af ter this conversation there began for Lina a series of pleasant lazy afternoons. Martens' studio was big and bleak and very cold. It was also wildly untidy, being littered with piles of canvases, derelict easels, lay-figures, rusty suits of armor, dusty statues, heaps of shabby books, and chests of old and faded dresses. Martens himself, with his ugly hawklike face and harsh voice, seemed to Lina pathetic. He treated her with the impersonal familiarity that he would have accorded to a pet kitten. He talked to her for hours at a time, pouring forth as though she could not understand him, all his curious and bitter thoughts. He was gentier than Nurdo, and more tragic. Nor did he ever try to make love to her. Once he said to her, bluntly, casually:
"Do you know that Rosing is in love with you?"



"Rosing? You must be mad. What has put such an idea into your head?"
"He is in love with you. As yet he doesn't know it. And I am not sure whether he is in love with you yourself or with his ideal of you—the dancer. But I am sure of one thing—he is obsessed by you."
"What nonsense you talk!"
"No, really, it isn't nonsense," said Martens coldly. He added after a pause: "Do you like coming here?"
"Of course I do."
"You are a strange girl. I think you must once have been very lonely. I know, because I, too, have been lonely. Listen, Lina, I myself could never be in love with you. Never, never. You are too elusive, too delicate, for my gross tastes. But I think that when you grow older many men will love you, and I think that they will be unhappy, for your heart is not easy to touch. But you have all the glamour of your race."
"Do you think I am so very Russian?"
"Russian!" He laughed contemptuously. "You are no more Russian than I am. You're a Jewess."
"Only half."
"God knows," he said, "where you come from. I neither care, nor want you to teil me.. I suppose that you were born an artist, and there is no nationality for such as you. I expect that you will one day be a great artist, for you have exactly the temperament, combined with the cold concentration, that should lead you to success. And where you go, Rosing will follow. Rosing has staked everything on you. If you fail, you will break his heart."
Lina said thoughtfully: "I don't think that I will fail. And yet it's difficult to say. Shall I make the tea now?"
"Yes."
He lighted his pipe and sat down on an oak chest by the fire, watching her moodily. He remarked at length:



"You are fortunate, in any case, more fortunate than you imagine. At least one day you will escape from Bruges—I never shall."
"Why not, if you hate it so much?"
"Oh, that's too difficult to explain, ma petite. All I can say is that once I had my chance of escaping and was too stupid, or hadn't enough talent, to take it. I studied art in Paris for four years and took myself seriously then. I was convinced that I would be a great painter, as convinced as you are that you will be a great dancer. I think you are right; I know I was wrong."
"What happened then?"
"Oh, it's too monotonous to relate! I learned gradually in a particularly bitter way, that I was not a great painter, not even a mediocre painter, only an extraordinarily bad one. And I was poor, and in debt. I lived in Holland then, with a woman I loved deeply, and in whose love for me I had a sublime, an imbecile confidence. She left me, for a rich man. Now, when I look back, I am sorry for that woman, but in those days I was only sorry for myself. And so I came here to live, where I was born, because I cared little enough about anything, and because I thought, and still think, that Bruges is the saddest town in all the world. And that, I think, is the reason why Rosing came here. Yet his case is not the same as mine, but even more melancholy, for Rosing had everything once and now has nothing. He had fame, and through you he will have fame again. I never had."
"You think fame is everything, then?" Lina wanted to know.
"For an artist, yes, of course it is." He grinned at her. "You will learn that for yourself one day. And now we have talked enough of desolate things. Will you, next time you visit me, bring your dancing dress, and allow a very bad painter to sketch you?"



She agreed with enthusiasm, for she much enjoyed visiting Martens. Sometimes the sedate richness of Rosing's house oppressed her, but in the drafty, disorderly studio she feit at home immediately. Furthermore Martens' unconventional conversation nearly always revolved round herself, which was in itself immensely gratifying. And there was another, more childish reason for her pleasure in these visits—Martens always produced for tea, on the days when she was expected, a pile of bilious sugary cakes, and Lina, at sixteen, was still youthful enough to take delight in sweetmeats.
She became accustomed to the gloomy painter, and before long entertained for him very 'much the same vague affection as she had once feit for the grizzly bear in Rambert's circus.
But she did not, in future, encourage him to talk of Rosing or of Rosing's feelings toward her. Those, she decided, were matters that should remain, for the present at least, entirely secret.



Chapter 14
It was Carnival.
Lina, Justine and Marie leaned out of the kitchen window, Lina and Marie chattered excitedly to each other, and Justine maintained a disapproving demeanor to which the others appeared entirely indifferent.
"Will they pass here, Marie?"
"Part of the procession undoubtedly will, Mademoiselle, on its way to the Grande Place."
"How I wish," cried Lina, "that I was going with them. It would be so easy—I could wear my new white tarlatan ballet-dress and a mask. I could pass as Columbine, whom I have often seen, long ago, in the English pantomimes."
"Monsieur would be much annoyed if you did any such thing," Justine instantly remarked.
"I know, I know, and I can't understand why. People are so seldom happy in Bruges, only once a year, it seems to me, which is all the more reason for making the most of it."
"They come, they come!" cried Marie, pinching Lina's arm in her excitement, and indeed the strains of a band could plainly be heard approaching from the other side of the canal. The three women listened intently as the music swelled louder, now mingled with other and more confused sounds—a din of shrill tin trumpets, whistles, noisy laughter, cheering and the clatter of wooden rattles.
A bell pealed in the kitchen.
"Monsieur," said Justine reverently, and disappeared immediately, but Lina and Marie scarcely noticed her departure.
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"Look, Marie, look!"
"C'est vraiment magnifique!" Marie agreed enthusiastically, and they both continued to stare, enraptured, at a motley crowd of rowdy merrymakers, all masked and wearing either dominos, or shabby clowns' dresses. This crowd danced along, whooping, immediately behind the band; its members seemed in excellent spirits; they paused, frequently, in the course of their grotesque capers to cuff one another over the head with painted bladders or to fling in one another's eyes showers of confetti and paper rose leaves.
"Mademoiselle," urged Marie, "you will assuredly fall out of the window if you lean forward any more."
"Look, Marie, one of them is coming here!"
And Marie, awestruck: "C'est un monsieur parjaitement bien comme il faut!"
The two women were framed in a window immediately above the canal, which reflected, with all the fidelity of a mirror, their two selves—the dark-eyed girl in her mulberry-colored frock, with her hair combed back from her forehead, and the rosy-faced maid, so misleadingly prim in her starched and snowy goffered cap. Both were young and gay and laughing, and the masked gentleman, very tall in his blue cloak, and wearing his beaver at a rakish angle, dropped ostentatiously out of the procession in order to observe them more closely.
Apparently he liked what he saw, for he called across to them cheerfully:
"Mademoiselles! Mademoiselles! What are you doing up there lilce nuns in your window? This is Carnival, and I adjure you to come along with me and take part in the procession!"
"What an impertinence!" Marie gasped, with cheeks redder than peonies.
Lina burst out laughing, and began to explain in dumb



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show, that it was impossible to escape from the house. The masked gentleman then dropped down on one knee and pretended to serenade them, which* caused more laughter, obviously so encouraging to one of festive spirit that he sprang to his feet, ran nimbly across the bridge, climbed like a cat on to the arch and stood there smiling only a few yards away from them.
"Come along!" he called to them, "jump, if you like, and I'll catch you, but come quickly, or we shall miss the fun!"
"Impossible!" Lina explained, shaking her head.
"Mademoiselle, you are ravishing, and I adore your mulberry dress. Furthermore, it is Carnival, and I want first to dance with you, then to feed you with sugarplums 1"
"Alas!" she mocked, "I'm a prisoner, and you can not rescue me. What is more, you will most certainly in another moment fall into the canal, and that would be a pity, for your clothes are very fine."
He laughed at that, still poised straddling on the arch of the bridge. Beneath the black velvet mask his mouth was wide and gay, the mouth of one who lives for and loves the pleasures of the world.
"Mademoiselle, you are an ingrate, and I shall waste no more time upon you. But one day, when next I cross your path, I shall assuredly carry you off and make you dance with me. Therefore I shall say, not adieu, but au revoir. As for the sugar-plums, here they are. Catch!"
He flung through the window a handful of crystallized violets and rose-leaves, doffed his hat with exaggerated deference, jumped off the bridge and ran away without another word. But they thought they heard him laughing as he disappeared.
"Mademoiselle," Marie announced solemnly, kneeling



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down to piek up the scattered sweets, "I think that you have made a conquest. And such a romantic gentleman! Such whiskers, and such long elegant legs!"
Lina continued to peer out of the window.
"Really, a conquest," Marie insisted.
"That's all very well," Lina said discontentedly, "but he's gone now. Every one's gone to the Carnival."
"Not every one," Marie objected, "only the young people of the town."
"Well, we are young, aren't we? And yet it's already time for my lesson."
She went up-stairs, changed into her practise dress of mist-colored tarlatan, and descended to the salon, where the room was cleared for the lesson, but where Rosing had not as yet appeared.
She feit lively, active, filled with a nervous energy. She began dutifully to practise at the bar, but soon tiring of these mechanical exercises she advanced to the center of the floor, where to her own intense satisfaction she performed there and then the exhausting feat of thirty fouettés. Never, before, had she been able to achieve this particular tour de jorce, and she was enchanted, when she turned, panting, to see Rosing watching her from the doorway.
"You see what I have just done—thirty fouettés? Next time it shall be thirty-two."
But Rosing exclaimed dramatically, almost shaking her in his anger:
"Never, never again let me see you perform such tricks, do you hear? Never, never again! Leave acrobatics to others,—must I teil you more than a hundred times the same thing?"
She said dejectedly: "It was Carnival. I feit gay."
"Carnival! Is that any excuse for straining your muscles and the arches of your feet?"



Lina proceeded to explain that at Madame Vanessi's school the girl who could have performed thirty fouettés would most certainly have been acclaimed as a brilliant technician.
"Oh, you are impossible, my poor child," Rosing told her impatiently. "Will you never understand that a danseuse of your rare and delicate qualities is far, far above such vulgar Italian fireworks? Thirty fouettés, indeed! As well dance as you did when first I saw you in the circus!"
But he relented, as he always did, seeing that she was really crestfallen.
"In any case, n'en parions plus, n'en parions plus, n'en parions plus! I have something of more importance to relate. Teil me, how old are you now?"
"Sixteen past. I have been with you for nearly a year."
"Exactly. Now listen to me very carefully, my little Lina. In eight months' time there is to be an audition in Milan for young dancers of the classical school. Since the most famous maitres de ballets are to be present the audition will be of some importance, and I understand that the most promising pupils are to be selected by the authorities to dance in the corps de ballet during their next season. Now, my child, I am placed in a great
difficulty "
"But why? What is it? Why can't I go?"
"I beseech you not to interrupt me! I have not yet said that you shall not go."
"Then why is it difficult?"
"Ah, for this reason."
He thrust his hands in his pockets, walked up and down the room, and explained with great seriousness:
"I had planned for you in two or three years' time a great and eventful début. How I would arrange that is my own affair—the old fox knows how to manage such



matters. But until then, I wished to guard my secret, my discovery. However, I have reflected a great deal during the last few days, and I am by no means certain that it would not be of benefit to you to visit Milan and dance there inconspicuously in the ballet for a few months. You see, Lina, I think that you will one day be a great dancer, perhaps a very great dancer indeed, and while I believe that I am entirely capable of teaching you, at the same time I could never forgive myself if I denied you any experience, any modern teaching, that might afterward be of service to you in your career."
"But," she objected, "I might dance at the audition and yet not be chosen for the corps de ballet."
"No," said Rosing in a very definite tone of voice. He repeated again, shaking his head: "No. If you dance at all, you will be chosen. That I can promise."
"I would like to go."
"I have no doubt that you would like to go. That is not the point. The point is whether it would be of advantage to you to dance for some months in that famous corps de ballet or whether you would be better off here. Personally, I am inclined to think that the experience would be good for you."
There was a pause.
She asked suddenly, softly: "If I went to Milan for some time, would you leave me, or would you stay there with me?"
He turned toward her with a gesture at once troubled, evasive.
"Who can teil? All that, in any case, is for the future, eight months ahead."
"I would be unhappy if you left me."
She smiled at him again then, looking straight into his face.
"You know I would," she continued gravely. "You



found me, you took me in, you made me dance. I know, now, that I never danced before I came to you. I had been trained for years, but I didn't know how to dance. You are beginning to teach me. You mustn't leave me, really you mustn't."
Rosing was silent for a long time. At length he said abruptly: "And the lesson? You are not here to talk, Mademoiselle, but to dance!"
"I am quite ready."
"Wait," he said suddenly, "there is one more matter. In any case, you must, whether you go to Milan or not, have a name, a Russian name. During the night I named you."
"Indeed?" she mocked.
"Yes. I gave to you in the night a Russian name like enough to your own for you to remember it."
"And what is my name?"
"Varsovina. Lina Varsovina. I hope that one day you will bring credit to that name."
"I mustn't forget it, must I?"
She looked at him happily, sparkling with excitement. She could execute thirty fouettés, she was probably going to Milan, her name was Varsovina! Forgotten was Carnival, the music, the masked gentleman, and the sugarplums. . . . More swiftly forgotten even than her father, Vanessi, Nurdo the juggler, and the circus.
Varsovina! Milan!
"I am so happy!" she said to Rosing.
"And the lesson?"
"At once, at once! I can hardly wait."
And she danced that morning with an almost passionate abandon.



Chapt er 15
Lina was learning Cerito's masterpiece, "the dance with a shadow," and Rosing professed himself pleased with her progress. Sometimes he played her accompaniments on the piano, but more often on the violin, the better to observe her every movement. Soon after Carnival, however, he engaged a pianist, a music-master from the town, to play while she danced, observing that he wished to give her his undivided attention. Furthermore, instead of the rather rough ballet shoes obtainable at that time in Brussels, he himself sent to Paris for boxes and boxes of delicate sandals, softer, more flexible than silk. Nothing further was said, but she began to realize that she was definitely going to Milan for the audition.
Rosing worked her harder than ever, and she was too tired, when he had finished a course of tuition that still included the Russian language, even to visit her friend Martens at his studio.
Although her dancing hours were longer than ever, her master was gentier, more enthusiastic, and not quite so ready to find fault. The truth was that he had begun to realize that in this particular instance, with this great talent that had dropped to him from the skies, it was of no use attempting to model the pupil after his own particular forms or individual experience. His vast personal knowledge he could, and did, convey to her, otherwise he concentrated solely upon that lack of technique without which even the freshness and delicacy of her dancing would still have been incomplete.
By this time she could speak broken Russian, but that was not enough for him, and when she was ready to drop
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with physical exhaustion she must still concentrate, weary as she was, upon verbs and grammar-books that seemed to her dryer than dust, more difficult than the most elaborate pirouettes.
Sometimes she wept. "I can't! I can'tl I shall never learn this detestable language."
But Rosing was inexorable.
Spring melted into summer, with interminable days of fretful, dragging heat. From the stagnant canals arose foul and noisome smells; while in the house, during the daytime, blinds and shutters were drawn, so that the rooms swam in a dead green twilight, and it was as though they lived at the bottom of an aquarium.
Lina danced through that breathless summer with white cheeks and a body that always, even at night, seemed to be bathed in perspiration.
Martens, calling at the house, said roughly to Rosing: "You're killing her."
Rosing was furious. "I am not a brute, Martens, and I know by this time of what a dancer is capable."
Martens said no more, but spoke to Doctor Silvercroys.
The result was that she was given a week's holiday and sent off with Justine to a fishing village just over the Belgian border. Here she was happy, content to remain listless for the first three days. She lay on the beach delighted to relax her strained and weary limbs, while a breeze scented with seaweed ruffled her hair, and the rusty sails of fishing boats, drifting far away into the distance, brought to her a peace, a deep feeling of content, that she had never before experienced.
When she returned to Bruges she was well once more, energetic and agile and ambitious.
In the autumn, when mists crept down from lowering skies to cloud the town and dead leaves danced, rustling, in every alley, Rosing said to her:



"My little Lina, in a few weeks we shall leave for Milan."
"Do you really think I am ready to dance?"
"I think so, yes."
"I can hardly believe that we are really going!"
Rosing seemed abstracted. He said at length:
"You must remember, my child, that the methods of the Italian school differ considerably from my own. Individual grace of movement means little enough with them, and they are more concerned with correctness of attitudes and deportment. Therefore, if they do not hail you immediately as a great dancer, don't break your heart— they can teach you much all the same, and you will be the better for it."
He had chosen with rare cunning for her first public appearance, the dance of the fairy from the ballet Source.
They worked together, day and night, at every movement, every pirouette, every attitude, every smile.
On the evening before their departure Martens, Vanderkerk and Silvercroys came round to drink her health and wish her luck. Lina was grave, composed, but rather dazed; in spite of Rosing's confidence she was secretly apprehensive of failure.
In the morning they went away.
When they arrived in Milan she exclaimed suddenly, eagerly: "I have been here before, with the circus. How strange it is to come back a dancer!"
She went early to bed at the quiet hotel where Rosing had engaged rooms. She was so nervous, so fearfully excited in the morning that she complained of feeling sick and could not eat her breakfast. But here Rosing was implacable.
"No coffee, no audition. Remember you will go without your dinner."
He never allowed her to eat or drink before she danced,



nor was she permitted to drink for at least an hour after having danced. He had a theory that such mild excesses were injurious to the muscles.
When she had finished the coffee he told her to put on her bonnet and come down to the Opera-House.
"First of all you shall familiarize yourself with your surroundings. Then you shall practise. But let me look at you—yes, it is in good taste."
He alluded to the new poke-bonnet, bought, after much deliberation, just before their departure; it was coquettish, and wreathed with yellow rosebuds. She wore mittens, and gave him her arm; he himself was dressed in his handsome best. Never before had they walked out together in this manner, and their new formality effected a slight alteration in their relations together; both were a trifle constrained.
"There," he said, "is the famous school where you might at this moment be learning to become a dancer."
"It looks like a prison. I prefer your home, and Bruges."
She gave his arm a little squeeze of affection.
Once inside the Scala all self-possession died away, and she became so frightened, so miserably apprehensive, that her legs trembled and her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. The colossal size and dignity of the famous theater, its splendid gilt and chandeliers, the tiers and tiers of red-draped boxes, its vast bleak stage, all its pomp and majesty, combined to make her feel more insignificant, more wretchedly incompetent, than she could ever have believed possible.
She waited, shivering, while Rosing disco ver ed where she was to change.
"Make haste, my child, and then come back here. We must get in some practise."
She was conducted through labyrinths of dirty drafty



passages, up flights of cold stone stairs, into a tiny whitewashed room where a stout Italian woman was engaged in crimping the hair of a sallow little girl in a limp tulle skirt.
As Lina could speak no Italian and her companions nothing else, conversation was impossible and she changed as quickly as she could, a little reassured by the freshness of her new ballet-dress, with its ten layers of crisp and snowy tulle. The Italian woman kindly lent her make-up, which she used sparingly. By the time she was ready two other budding ballerinas, also escorted by mothers, had taken possession of the room, and she was glad enough to leave it. She lost herself for quite five minutes in the rabbit-warren of passages and was in a panic when she at last succeeded in finding her master.
He was right to hurry her. Already five or six girls were practising back-stage, exercising, "warming up," or working at the bar, while their teaehers, standing over them, screamed abuse and encouragement. One girl burst into tears. Two others whispered and giggled together. But the majority were pale, solemn as soldiers about to go into battle. Lina and Rosing worked for an hour. Then they waited until the pianist was free and could run over the music of her dance.
She said nervously to Rosing:
"He is taking it too fast—that tempo's all wrong."
"No, no. It is exactly the right tempo—as we have always taken it."
But she was distracted and unable to believe him.
She wrapped a shawl over her shoulders and went afterward to sit in the stalls. The great theater was very cold. An hour passed. Then, at last, strolling cheerfully into the theater as though the occasion were of no importance whatsoever, came the great maitres de ballet, the dancing teaehers, the musical director and other gods of the opera.



Some of these people knew Rosing and nodded to him; one, Carlo Villeneuve, actually came across to speak to him.
"You've brought a pupil, they teil me?"
"Yes. The little one here."
"Is she any good?"
"I really can't say," said Rosing carelessly, "she has a certain talent."
"Splendid, splendid," commented the great man with vague condescension. He took his place in the front row of stalls. The audition had begun.
Lina was sent to wait in the wings. There she remained for another hour. Her acute nervous fear had subsided, leaving her wretched, certainly, but cold, indifferent, detached, and rather inclined to yawn.
"What does it matter? Most certainly I shan't please these people."
And so she waited, silent and aloof, among a knot of trembling young girls in muslin skirts. When they were summoned, they crossed themselves, invoked the Madonna, glided on to the stage, danced and came back panting, relieved, almost jubilant. Then they disappeared, and their place was immediately taken by other aspirants. At last a man came across to Lina.
"Varsovina?" he asked, frowning at a paper in his hand.
"Yes."
"On next."
When she heard the opening bars of her dance her indifference vanished, to be succeeded by an intense, an almost fanatical desire to excel. She in her turn glided on to the great stage. She had a confused impression of emptiness in the auditorium, where indeed only the first few rows of stalls were occupied by the masters, by the pupils who had already danced, and by the mothers of these pupils. Her shoes feit stiff; she had not "broken"



them in properly at her practise. The strangeness of her surroundings, the forlorn aspect of the vast stage, at first perplexed her; it was not until she had achieved a technically perfect pirouette that she feit a confidence in any way equal to this violent frenzy of ambition. And then, with the dawning of confidence, came a glow of inspiration that seemed to burn up, like some ardent flame, her whole being, so that she danced not only with her body, but with her heart, her soul, her mind, her every nerve, thought and emotion. The evolutions of the Fairy, at once so graceful and so elusive, were exactly suited to the fragile quality that Rosing had long ago discerned in her dancing. That had always been a natural gift; technically, as an exponent of the classic school, she had made amazing strides under his tuition.
He sat in the stalls, rigid, upright, gnawing at his beard; once Carlo Villeneuve, the maitre de ballet, shot him a glance, charged with suspicion and inquiry but he ignored his old friend. When the dance was over he got up and walked slowly, with great ostentation, toward the nearest pass-door. He observed, looking slyly beneath his lashes, the group of maestros clustered close together, whispering excitedly to one another, quite ignoring the next dancer, who, with an appealing, artificial smile, was poised precariously on her pointes. Before he had gone very far Villeneuve ran after him.
"You're leaving, Rosing?"
"I must reclaim my pupil. The child's ignorant, and will assuredly lose herself in the coulisses."
"One moment."
And the Italian, with a crafty smile, beckoned him closer.
"Who is that girl, Rosing?"
"I've told you—my pupil. Varsovina. A young Russian trained in England."



"Sans blague, where did you find the girl?"
"Are you interested in her?" asked Rosing with an affectation of indifference.
"Oh, interested. . . . She has the usual faults—her deportment's poor—not enough experience. But there is undoubtedly a certain quality."
"Undoubtedly," Rosing agreed sardonically.
They looked at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing.
"Congratulations!" And Villeneuve shook him impulsively by the hand.
"Come now!" said Rosing confidentially, "and it's my turn to say 'sans blague' what do you really think of my pupil?"
The Italian said simply: "I think that just now we have seen a prodigy!"
"Ah!"
"What do you intend to do with the girl?"
"She needs experience. I want her to dance here in the corps de ballet for a few months."
"You may be right, my friend. And after?"
"After?" He smiled. "After? Chï lo sa? She may not make the advances I hope for. Her health may break. A hundred things might happen. But if all goes well I think my little Russian will sweep the world."
The maestro hesitated, then said confidentially:
"Come and say a word to the others before you go. They are excited and curious—it can do yourself and your pupil no harm."
"Willingly," agreed Rosing with the greatest courtesy.



Chapter 16
When Rosing eventually retrieved Lina he found her dressed and alone, but sobbing inconsolably in the dressing-room.
"What's the meaning of this tantrum?"
"Oh ... I was so miserable—you never came! I thought you were ashamed of me. Teil me I was not so bad! I wasn't, was I? I have danced better, but most certainly I have danced worse!"
"You have danced worse," Rosing told her briefly.
"Then," she wanted to know, tears still glistening on her cheeks, "have I—can it be that I have been chosen for the ballet?"
"That is settled—yes."
He continued, a smile lurking at the corner of his mouth: "You have made quite a success, my child. If I wished, you could dance, not as a figurante, one of a whole corps de ballet, but as a coryphée, during this next season."
"Well, why can't I?" Lina not unnaturally demanded.
"Because I don't wish you to be noticed—as yet. If you became a coryphée, you would inevitably be noticed. As a figurante I think you will remain obscure."
"But I don't want to remain obscure," Lina protested.
Rosing was in high good humor.
"Can you really not trust me, my child? When you make your début it will not be as a coryphée, I can assure you, but as a prima ballerina. There! It is a promise. And now dry your eyes and come along, for I must take you back to the hotel."
She learned many things, the next day. One was that
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while dancing in the corps de ballet she was to take lessons every morning with an old retired ballerina, Signorina Angellini. Furthermore, she was to lodge with this person while Rosing returned to Bruges to shut up his house, for during the four months of her engagement he intended himself to live in Milan.
"But during my absence, which should not last more than ten days, Signorina Angellini will look after you as though you were her own daughter."
And as she continued to look apprehensive at the prospect of Signorina Angellini, he explained:
"Russian technique with an Italian polish! That is my dream for you. And you will be enormously improved not only by dancing in the ballet at night, but also by the methods of a new and brilliant teacher—see to it you profit by them!"
Signorina Angellini was a fat, merry, good-humored little woman with an enormous bust, a shrill voice, and a dark shabby house littered with piaster Madonnas, statues of saints, holy-water stoups and dusty rosaries.
She thought Lina a freak, and said as much to her.
"To have achieved so much with so little hard work, that is miraculous. And now we will see what work can do."
Work, to Angellini, meant slave-driving as even Rosing had not understood it, but the little woman was so affable, so encouraging and so pleasant, that it was difficult at first to realize how cruelly pitiless were her standards. And when Lina was not working Angellini petted her, spoiled her, flattered her and fed her up with milk.
"So thin, the poor bambina! A flat chest and arms like sticks! But certainly you will drink it all! If not for fear of me because you want to grow into a pretty woman, eh? A ballerina as tiny as you—that won't do at all!"



Ten days passed, a fortnight, three weeks and there was no sign of Rosing.
"Why doesn't he come?" Lina wanted to know. "You don't think he has forgotten me, do you?"
Soon rehearsals would begin and already she had accompanied Angellini down to the Opera-House on more than one occasion.
Often they saw the pupils of the ballet-school severely chaperoned, hideously dressed, and always then Lina was enchanted by her own freedom. Some of them, she reflected, were her own age, seventeen, and had as yet achieved nothing, nothing at all. And she would have been completely happy in her new life had it not been for Rosing's inexplicable absence.
And then one evening, when she was resting on Angellini's sofa, with two kittens on her knee and a balletscore propped up before her eyes, the door opened and Rosing walked in. He looked as usual, gray and suave and beautifully dressed.
She was so delighted to see him that she sprang off the sofa, ran across to him and flung her arms round his neck.
"And the lessons?"
"Angellini's delighted with me. But she will teil you herself, only just now she's down-stairs in the kitchen. Why didn't you "
"I will go and speak to her. But, Lina, do me the favor of putting on your bonnet at once. I wish to take you out to dinner."
"How queer you are!" she said, rebuffed. "Aren't you in the least pleased to see me?"
"My little one, I am delighted."
"But you don't show it."
At this moment Angellini, hearing his voice, waddled up-stairs with every appearance of pleasure, and Lina



ran away to put on the bonnet with yellow rose-buds.
Once more Rosing put her hand upon his arm; they hailed a fiacre and drove off to a restaurant much frequented by the people of the Opera. He ordered champagne, but remained somber, wrapped in a reverie that she did not understand.
"And so you have missed me?" he asked at last.
"Have I missed you! You must never leave me again, Rosing, never, never. Angellini's kind to me, but that's not enough. Why did you stay away so long?"
"Perhaps," he said gravely, looking at her with tired melancholy eyes, "perhaps I did that on purpose. To test you."
"Why should you test me?"
"I want," he said, "to talk to you very seriously. Will you be kind enough to give me your attention?"
"Of course!"
"Very well, then," and he leaned across the table, looking at her intently, "listen then. You are on the threshold of a career. I think that career will be a brilliant one, but as yet we can not teil. In any case, you have no money, no family. You are alone in the world, and you will always, however much you succeed, be fighting against the world. With women that is invariably so. I am your friend, but circumstances may part us. I am sixty, you are seventeen. I could be your father very easily, but you must know by this time that I don't in the least look upon you as a daughter."
She stared at him then, her eyes dark in the whiteness of her face. He continued:
"My little one, you know that. You have known it for some time. I love you very deeply, very tenderly. I can't expect your love in return, for that would be impossible, but I do believe that you have a sincere regard for me. And I want, for so many reasons, to marry



you . . . don't refuse at once, before you have heard what those reasons are. . .
She said then, with complete simplicity: "Oh, I shan't refuse."
And as she looked at him affectionately her heart glowed with gratitude for all that this man had done for her. Marriage, in the circus, in the ballet, was a business affair, a matter of partnership. One bareback rider married another bareback rider because their acts would be better combined than separate. Similarly, in the ballet, when a dancer married, she married another dancer, a partner, a teacher, or a choreographist. You worked together, ate together, made a little love when there was nothing else to do, and, obviously, if you grew tired of each other or ceased to work successfully together, you parted, and there was no harm done. It was simplicity itself.
She would have been willing, long ago, for Rosing to have become her lover, not in the least because she wanted love, but because she was so grateful to him that this seemed to her not only a charming way, but the only possible way, of proving her afïection. She had never been in love with Nurdo, and had indeed no conception of what it was to care passionately for any man. She had tried to love Nurdo and had been repelled by him; but with Rosing it was different. She respected and admired him; he had invariably been kind to her and she was affectionately disposed toward him. She had never expected to marry him or any one, but now that the idea had been put into her head it seemed to her a sound one.
She therefore continued to smile, patted his hand, and repeated again with great conviction: "Of course I'll marry you. Whenever you want!"
Rosing for his part was completely dazed by the instantaneous success of his suit. He had expected her



either to recoil, outraged, or perhaps to stammer a blushing and maidenly refusal. He had prepared every type of argument, sensible, amorous, persuasive and hectoring, for her final subjugation, and this coolness, this little dignified air of businesslike sagacity, this blithe acceptance of what she appeared to regard as an excellent arrangement for both of them, really astonished him beyond all powers of speech. There was a pause, during the course of which he stared at her in silence: finally he inquired:
"You mean . . . you're quite sure, you're really serious, about marrying me?"
"Of course I am," she repeated firmly.
"But it is fantastic," Rosing declared helplessly.
"You don't look very pleased about it," Lina observed.
"Pleased? If I am pleased!! I am in Paradise!"
But he continued to regard her in a very peculiar fashion. He was too cynical, too suspicious, to take into account her gratitude; these girls were all alike, they came to their teachers raw, ignorant, and then, once they were trained they spread their wings, their gauzy wings of coryphées, and flew away, never to be seen again. He was determined that his Lina, his freak, his prodigy, his pride, should not escape him in this fashion. He thought, studying as though for the first time her small pale demure face with its luminous dark eyes:
"She is a passionnée, this Lina. Une vraie petite passionnée, and she will undoubtedly lead me a dance in no way connected with the ballet, but there is unfortunately no other way of controlling her, and she must above all be controlled. . . . And she is charming, and if I were not so old how dearly I should love her!"
He suggested that they should leave the restaurant, return to Angellini's and acquaint the old ballerina of their betrothal.



"I think," said he, "that she will approve."
"It doesn't matter if she does not approve," said Lina. "What has she to do with either you or me?"
In the fiacre he set about embracing her, and she submitted with a good grace. Nurdo, Rosing, what did it matter? You remained untouched, in your secret self, having no use for these things, but if you pretended cleverly enough they believed you, and then all was well. Rosing, for instance, who had looked at her so strangely when she had first agreed to marry him, seemed definitely in better spirits by the time they had reached Angellini's house.
The old woman embraced them both, burst into tears, recalled at some length her own two husbands and her five lovers, drank their health and then dismissed Rosing, for Lina had a lesson early the next morning. When he had gone she asked:
"Teil me, carissima, are you happy with a man so much older than yourself?"
"Yes," said Lina briefly.
"Ebbene! And he wants you, of course, for the same reason that Perrot wanted Carlotta Grisi!"
"Why did Perrot want Carlotta Grisi?"
"He was finished, épuisê, and had quarreled with the directors of the Paris Opera. Carlotta became his pupil; she was young, graceful, with much talent. Perrot married her, she was engaged by the Opera, and Perrot, her husband, her master, returned there in triumph."
"Rosing wants me more than that."
Angellini asked, with inquisitive kindness: "And you have really no young lover, little one?"
"I had one once, but I don't regret him, not a bit, not I. I prefer Rosing."
And she embraced Angellini warmly.
Shortly afterward they were married. Lina was an



engaging bride in white mousseline de soie over silk, a white poke-bonnet garlanded with orange-blossom, white mittens and white kid slippers. The bridegroom seemed as usual, gray, rather impassive, but no one took much notice of him. The afternoon of her wedding found Lina practising, and the next day she was rehearsing at the Opera with the other figurantes.
Angellini, discussing the marriage afterward with two cronies who were, like herself, retired and pensioned ballerinas, remarked confidentially:
"The strangest ménage in Milan is that of Rosing and the young Varsovina. Work, work, and then more work. And yet, figure to yourselves that he loves her—he actually loves that gosse who might be, to look at, no more than fifteen!"
"If he loves her, then he is a fooi. Otherwise the arrangement, from a business point of view, can only be advantageous to himself."
"But he loves her!" Angellini repeated again with tremendous emphasis, waving her hands.
"And the little Varsovina? With whom is she in love?" "Ah!" Angellini dropped her voice to a sepulchral whisper and announced dramatically: "She's sly, that little one! Ambitious, too. I think she loves only her own dancing, but who can teil? Let us wait until she has turned a few heads and then we will see of what her own heart is made!"
Tea, more tea, with heaps of cream and sugar, three dyed old heads nodaing close together, more gossip, more tea, more confidences. The three might have been young and fascinating as in the past, chattering in the dressingroom they had shared for so long together. Their voices sank to whispers:
"Varsovina . . . Rosing . . . Varsovina."



C hapt er 17
In a few weeks' time Lina was dancing in the corps de ballet of the Opera, one of a vast number of girls all dressed alike in pink tights, gauzy petticoats, and wreaths of glazed calico flowers. The work was hard, for in addition to the lessons with Angellini there were a number of ballets to be rehearsed—La Jolie Fille de Gand, Odetta, La figlia del bandito, Le villanelle de Chambéry.
Like the other figurantes, who were invariably herded together, and unlike the coryphées, who were permitted to dress only three in a room, Lina spent the intervals between ballets shut up with eleven other girls, all older than herself, in a narrow white-washed apartment furnished with two long dressers divided into compartments each containing a cheap mirror, a mess of grease paint, rouge-pots, powder-puffs and scraps of silver leaves. In the middle was a washstand. This room, bitterly cold in winter, was in summer intolerably over-heated.
One dresser attended twelve girls, with the result that none of them ever stopped screaming her name.
"Maria, the ribbon's come off my shoe!"
"Maria, Maria, where are my wings?"
"Maria, for the love of heaven, fasten this top hook and eye!"
They were in the main solid and muscular fairies— it was necessary, in their profession. Sometimes they had to fly, attaching themselves to the hooks of "travelers" at the top of the theater; sometimes they had to come up through traps in the stage, which necessitated running down steep stairs to a mezzanine floor where they were shot violently aloft from complicated platforms; always,
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in the intervals of flying and springing they had to dance, and they had to dance to the best of their ability. Lina's apparent fragility of body provoked unfavorable comment from her comrades, but she was the only one of the twelve who was married, and thus was able to command a certain respect.
The first precocious flush of her Milanese triumphs seemed to be over and done with. Now that she was one of a number of girls no one took the slightest notice of her. No one, now, with the exception of Angellini, told her that she was a prodigy. She had expected a certain amount of attention, a certain deference, perhaps also a little flattery—she did not get it. And, work as she might, it seemed impossible in any way for a member of the corps de ballet to attract notice.
"Why," she asked Rosing, "would you not let them make me a coryphée?"
"Because," said he, smiling at her satirically, "you would then have been observed too early. As it is, no one notices you."
"No one," Lina agreed sadly.
"How old he is, your husband?" remarked a girl named Sara. "Is it true that he was once a famous Russian dancer?"
"You leave my husband alone. He was, and is, more famous than you will ever be!"
She made no intimate friends among her comrades. She had never been accustomed to the society of her own sex. They were a rough, good-natured, self-centered lot. They knew by name Paris, London, Vienna, Turin, because "one dances there." Of Asia and Africa they were completely ignorant. "One doesn't dance there—they have no ballet." They hypocritically pretended to think Lina mad to have married her master, "paree que dans la danse il n'y a que les demoiselles." They quite frankly



lived only to work, struggle, sweat, eat cold veal and supplicate applause. They saturated themselves with Patchouli or Bouquet de la Reine, wore holy medals round their necks, crossed themselves before dancing, darned their own tights and mended their own shoes.
They all hoped to become coryphées one day. Further than that their ambition seemed unable to carry them, and when Lina assured them that one day she meant to become a prima ballerina assoluta they screamed with laughter. Yet, every night, they watched a great star, Elssler, with an almost abnormal attention. A great star, already waning. Elssler, not yet forty, prematurely battered by the frightful strain of her American tours, tired, nervous, irritable, magnificent. From afar Lina worshiped her, as a goddess. Elssler, "the Spaniard from the North," the secretly hated Austrian, dancing in a nest, a stronghold, of Italian patriots.
And then one night came a crisis. Like a storm cloud, dark, mutinous, threatening, Elssler's nervous temper had long been seething against the Opera-House of Milan, against its people, its politics, its pötins, its patriotism. And when the storm at last broke in a veritable crash of thunder it was precipitated by nothing more momentous than the mild gesture of a recently created Pope, who, benevolently disposed toward a famous national institution, presented on the first night of Faust a medal struck in his image to every member of the ballet.
Elssler left the stage after her first dance trembling with ill-concealed fury.
"I am Austrian—I have been insulted. Unless those girls take off their medals I shall not dance again to-night. Do you hear? You can send at once for my understudy!"
"But, Madame, you are being unreasonable!"
"Do you hear? Those medals! I shall not dance until they are thrown away!"



And the star conquered. Was Milan not at that time under the domination of Austria? She returned to dance, triumphant, brilliant, ready to excel herself, and the uproar of hissing and booing with which her reappearance was greeted drove her once more precipitately from the Scala stage, this time never to return. No longer was she the adorable, the divine Fanny—she was the Austrian! An enemy instead of an artist. And so finished ignominiously, like a spent rocket, the reign of Elssler in Italy.
"Keep your medal," said Rosing to Lina, "one day it will be historical."
"She's old, isn't she, Elssler?" Lina remarked. "When she is angry, as she was the other night, you can see plainly how old she is."
"There speaks seventeen! If when you are near forty you can dance as Fanny dances, your husband, if he is still alive, will indeed be proud of you!"
The lessons continued, more exhausting than ever now that she was dancing nightly in the ballet. Once, after a séance at the bar lasting for more than two hours she dropped in a faint upon the floor and allowed herself to be undressed, sponged and revived with coffee, without in the least knowing what was happening to her.
After she had been for a few weeks with Angellini she emerged during her lesson hours from the obscurity of her life in the corps de ballet, for Villeneuve and other maestros sometimes came with Rosing to watch her practise. They said little in her presence. Afterward their comments were unrestrained.
"She may be thin," observed Villeneuve once, "but she has so much length of leg that her covering power is enormous. She is made like a grasshopper, your pupil! And she has lightness."
"She might well have," said Rosing dryly, "I once threatened to beat her if ever I heard her dance."



And another maestro pronounced, with an air of great sapience: "She is prodigious, to me, because she can remain in the air longer than any dancer, with the exception of Marie, that I have ever known. When she bounds, it is as though she were released from a springboard, and the elasticity of her insteps must be abnormal. But with her deportment I am not yet satisfied."
"You Italians!" derided Rosing, "you none of you appreciate my pupil's most captivating quality—her grace and delicacy, her ethereal personality. That can never be acquired if it is missing in the first place. Either a dancer is born with it, or she must lack it all her life."
"We are more interested in technique," argued Villeneuve.
"And I," said Rosing, "am also a showman."
The other figurantes heard that famous teachers went to watch their comrade practising, and began for the first time to take an interest in her.
"Don't you tremble with fright, Lina, when Villeneuve's eyes are on you?"
"No, at least not any more. He isn't my teacher. My husband and Angellini are my teachers. What could Villeneuve do to me?"
"But anything, little silly! One word from him and you could become a coryphée to-night. Another word and he could dismiss you, like that, with a wave of his hand!"
"And if he did? There's a ballet in Russia, a ballet in Paris, and a ballet in London. This is not the only town in the world where one dances."
"That Lina," observed another girl, "already thinks herself Elssler. Teil us, vain one, when are we to have the pleasure of watching you dance the cachucha for us?"
"Never. That's not my style of dancing, Elssler's. She is superb, but I shall never dance as she does."



"Indeed? Perhaps you prefer the balloné style of Taglioni?"
"Yes, I do," said Lina, and laughed. "Of course I do—that's much more my affair!"
They called her Marie, after that, and asked her every night where were the bouquets from her admirers. But she was as obstinate with them as she had been with her father in the old Kennington days.
"Don't worry! One day I shall have as many flowers as Elssler or Adelaide Ferrari!"
It was not so much conceit as blind unquestioning acceptance of a destiny that she firmly believed to have been imposed upon her by powers vaguely supernatural. She said to Rosing one night when she was undressing:
"When am I to dance properly?"
"When you are ready."
"But when will that be, Rosing?"
"How many times must I remind you that I have, like other people, a Christian name?"
"Stanislas, then." She continued, reflectively: "It's extraordinary, to me, how diffïcult it is to say that name. It doesn't come readily, somehow."
"My dear child, you really hurt me when you speak in such a careless fashion."
"Well, but it is," Lina persisted. "I have been with you for two years and never called you Stanislas until lately, when we were married. And it's such a long name to say when you are tired."
"Then we will not discuss it any further, but "
"I forgot to teil you," she interrupted, "a few days ago I had a letter from Paul Martens, a letter of congratulation on the marriage."
"Where is it?"
"I don't know. I think I threw it away."
"But have you answered this letter?"
"No. I have been too busy."



"Really, Lina," he said reproachfully, "you are not very kind to your old friends. It made you happy enough, in Bruges, whenever Martens asked you to visit him, and now that you have come to Milan, behold! he exists for you no longer!"
"Oh, that's not true! I like Paul very much, very much indeed. Of course I've not forgotten him."
"Lina, answer me one question—have you ever, once in all your life, given a single thought to people with whom you once were friendly and have since been separated from? Your juggler, your family, your circus friends, your old dancing teacher?"
"Oh, I see what it is," said she. "You're trying to quarrel with me, aren't you?"
"Indeed not," he said emphatically, "I want only to know if you have the natural feelings common to most people or whether with you they simply do not exist."
"I don't understand you; one moment you teil me that a dancer must love only her dancing and the next moment you reproach me for forgetting my friends."
"Not at all. I told you once that a dancer can not combine her very exacting profession with that of an amoureuse. I never forbade you to make friends. Why, even in the ballet you teil me you have no comrades! What guarantee have I that you will not one day forget your husband as easily as you forgot the juggler and Paul Martens?"
She got up then, came across the room and curled herself on the floor beside him, more insinuating than a young cat.
She whispered in his ear: "You mustn't scold me. Not when I am so tired. Please don't, because, you know, I am very fond of you, even although I can't always remember to say Stanislas! How could I ever forget you?"
And she smiled at him once more, the wise mischievous smile that still so much perplexed him.



Chapter 18
When the Scala season was over they returned once more to Bruges, which seemed to both a sad and sleepy place after all the glittering sophistication of Milan. Lina had received an offer to dance as third ballerina during the winter season, but Rosing, much to her chagrin, refused to accept it. He repeated with a gentle obstinacy:
"We shall find something better than that."
"But what could possibly be better?"
"You must have patience."
Patience I She grew tired of the word. Now when she danced it was for Rosing alone, and the progress she made entirely failed to compensate her for the admiration of Angellini, the eager eyes of the watching maestros, and all the color, noise and excitement of the great OperaHouse. Like her mother before her she was a natural child of the ballet and would have been content to remain with the ballet, eating, sleeping and working with the ballet all her life, provided, of course, that she advanced with enough rapidity to gratify her extraordinary ambition. And in Milan she was quite sure that she would have advanced—had she not created a furore among the famous teachers!
But Bruges, with its shadows, its rain, the gray-green of its misty canals, could no longer give to her the stimulus that had come to mean happiness. Even the pleasure of directing the activities of Justine and the youthful Marie soon began to lose its savor. She was not interested in houses, meals, servants, market-days. She was interested only in dancing. And Rosing, who had himself stoked the fires burning in her heart, was quite unable to subdue
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her feverish energy. He had wanted, so much, when they returned to Bruges, to learn a little more about this strange and elfish wife; he had thought that it would be gay, not entirely to neglect her dancing, because of that they were both incapable, but to rest her for a few weeks after the strain of Milan, talk to her more, love her with all his heart, teach her, perhaps, to love him.
She could not rest.
"Oh, don't, don't ask me to! You know that I must practise to-night, and it's wrong of you to try to stop me!"
"But, Lina, you have worked so hard! You'11 kill yourself!"
"I shall make myself ill if you prevent me from learning all I can."
Sometimes he feit himself a very Frankenstein, creator of something over which he would never have any control. Of love he was convinced that she could know nothing, although she seemed capable of other emotions, gratitude, admiration, jealousy, timidity. She was grateful to him, she admired him as an artist. At last he realized this, and knew that therein lay his hold upon her. But she had, he thought, no love to give him, no love to give to any mortal. All her love was concentrated upon her art. He who had once thought her passionate, now wished with all his heart that he had reason to suppose her capable of such a feeling. And she, who had in the circus days, when her life was aimless, so exasperated Nurdo by her complete submission, now, at the age of seventeen seemed more independent than a woman of iron. Certainly she had no longer need of any man.
Sometimes, to console himself, Rosing reflected:
"She can't at least escape me. She can never escape me while I live. She's my pupil, my artist, my wife— bound to me by every possible contract."



She went often to see Paul Martens. Perhaps she was anxious to prove that she did not forget so easily as Rosing had supposed.
"You see," said Martens, "I was right when I told you that you would escape from Bruges."
"But I've not escaped, since I've married Rosing."
"Oh, yes, you have escaped. And Rosing, too, through you. You're a fairy, Lina, as we always told you in the old days. One whisk of your wand, one flutter of your wings, and you'11 fly away, for ever this time. And by some process of spells and enchantment with which I'm not conversant, you'11 take Rosing with you. Lucky Rosing!"
"You always said that he was in love with me," Lina recollected.
"Yes. But I never said that you were in love with him."
She evaded this.
"Will you ever come and see me dance in Brussels?"
"I will, Lina. And I'll send you flowers. But I won't come round and pester you to have supper with me after your triumphs."
"Why not?"
"Because you wouldn't come."
"Now that's not true!" Lina protested with indignation.
"You would be very silly if you did," Martens explained negligently. "What possible use could a young and brilliant ballerina find for an ill-tempered, elderly and obscure artist of uncertain temper? Don't be a little fooi, Lina. You can't afford to be sentimental if you wish to succeed."
"You are all the same, you and Rosing," Lina complained, "you both think that I have no heart."
He looked at her queerly.
"So Rosing thinks that, does he? Well, he has only



himself to blame. If he wanted matrimony he should have kept to mortal flesh. Fairy food is mostly damned unsatisfying."
"I don't know what you're talking about, but it sounds very silly. And I must go home now. I have a Russian lesson."
"Pirouettes or verbs?" Martens wanted to know.
"Verbs."
"Strange, Lina, that you can't speak your own language!"
"Oh, you know very well that it's not my own language. But he wants me to speak it well enough to pass as Russian, and so I must at least try."
When she returned, walking listlessly, swinging her bonnet by the string, Rosing met her at the door, pale with an intense excitement.
"My little one, your début! It's all arranged—six months from now—Naples—the San Carlo Theater!"
And the charming transports of her emotion, the sparkling gaiety of her face, the joyous enthusiasm that caused her to fling her arms about his neck, kissing him repeatedly, so delighted him that he wept for very pleasure and then, sitting on his knee, she dried his eyes with her own handkerchief.
"You shall be proud of me. I promise you that you shall be proud of me!"
"But I am already proud of you," Rosing declared.
"How good you are! How much I love you!"
And she embraced him once more.







Part Three PRIMA BALLERINA







Chapt er 19
Needless to linger upon the Neapolitan début of Lina Varsovina! She came only to conquer; in a single night, like Taglioni bef ore her, she leaped into the light of fame. The ballet Les Eljes might have been especially designed to display to the best advantage her delicacy and purity of movement, her eerie charm of personality.
Rosing, the crafty showman, had talked little of his prodigy, preferring her to be judged on her merits, with the result that the more influential critics were unanimous in expressing enthusiastic approval.
"Mlle. Varsovina is the essence of all that is supple and graceful; this grace, however, has also an air of originality, even of strangeness, quite unlike that of any other dancer, and furthermore, the convincing quality of her technical perfection already proves her to be an accomplished artist. ..
"This young lady—and she is, we understand, very young indeed—established herself from the start as a spiritual dancer with a prodigious command of technique . . . she succeeds in being at the same time delicate and powerful. . .
"Mlle. Varsovina reminded us of nothing so much as those fairies of Scotland, favorites of Walter Scott, who roam in the moonlight near mysterious fountains with necklaces of dewdrops and girdles of silver. . .
"Her vivacity, her astonishing agility, are less remarkable than the mysterious, almost ethereal qual-
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ity of her dancing. . . . She is always graceful and captivating, and appears to dance as naturaily as a bird sings. . . "
And so, quïte simply, in one night, was created a mvthical figure—the figure of a Russian dancer. Rumor declared Rosing's wife to be the daughter of a musicmaster living in Moscow; it insisted that she had been for years a pupil at the Imperial School of Ballet of St. Petersburg; that her husband, fanatically jealous, kept her locked in her room with a giant Cossack to guard the door.
And in Naples she never appeared in public save on his arm; she dressed simply, in white, but wore a ruby pendant, like a drop of blood, upon her breast; she spoke fluent French, but no Italian; she seemed shy, childish almost, but she darkened her long eyes with mascara now, and always remembered to place her ikon in her dressingroom, where a candle burned reverently beneath it.
They lived, the two of them, in a state of bemusement during the period immediately succeeding her Neapolitan début. Their lives had been transformed with a dramatic swiftness into something sweeter, stranger, than any dream; every waking moment was colored by the brightness, so often bewildering, of this sudden fame; they moved, talked, ate and slept mechanically; when no one was looking they glanced at each other incredulously, but were themselves too impressed to indulge in gaiety or laughter, for this triumph, however splendid, was somehow more solemn than a grand salute of trumpets.
On her last night in Naples the hotel was surrounded by a crowd of enthusiasts who shouted her name—the name that was not even hers—until Rosing pushed her out on to the balcony, bidding her throw the flowers from her bouquets that these admirers might scramble for them



and return home, some of them, triumphantly, with a souvenir of Varsovina the dancer.
She obeyed him, as she always did; smiled when he directed her, bowed when he told her to. She was not yet eighteen.
Once he said to her, jerked for a moment out of his hypnotized acceptance of their triumphs:
"Really, you know, you were right. You should perhaps have danced for a season as third ballerina in Milan. All this has come so quickly—too quickly. It's almost frightening."
He looked, as he said this, haggard, older than usual. She answered, after a pause, that it would have been more frightening to have been a failure.
"And what do you mean by 'too quickly'?" she wanted to know. "Too quickly for me, or for you?"
"For you, of course."
"But why?"
"Oh, my dear . . . if you can't understand, what is the use of my trying to explain? Can you really not see that you have set for yourself, before you are eighteen, a Standard that will not perhaps be easy to maintain? When you are still a child, you are discovered to have genius, and the world applauds you. For the next twenty years you must never look back, never deteriorate, for if you do I assure you that those who have flattered you will be the first to sneer. On the contrary, every day you must try to improve yourself, and one grows weary, after about ten years, of trying to do that. I wish, Lina, with all my heart, that you were a few years older."
"You mustn't become so melancholy," she told him, "it's only because you are tired, and haven't slept lately. Why, the other day, when you gave me the ruby, you said you had never been happier."
And indeed, her triumphs had done much to make their



strange marriage more satisfactory. The blaze of limelight thrust so relentlessly upon both had only combined to make them more dependent on each other. If they were dazed, they were dazed together. She wondered often what she would have done without him, while he frequently reflected, with the keenest relish, that by marrying her he had made her his, and that never, while he lived, could she escape him.
She might conceivably have escaped, had she been free, for the excellent reason that people were always awaiting an opportunity of inviting her to do so. The beautiful young gentlemen of Naples sat nightly at the theater, classical profiles turned eagerly upward toward the stage, gloved fingers clutching at the delicate flowers they invariably showered upon her at the end of the act. There were notes, too: "Would Mademoiselle Varsovina honor the Conté de Cerami with her presence at supper after the ballet?" Mademoiselle Varsovina would be delighted, providing she might also accept for her husband, Monsieur Rosing; Mademoiselle Varsovina never attended supper-parties without the escort of Monsieur.
And yet, despite this exemplary behavior, Rosing knew moments of panic.
"Lina, are you sure you are not attracted by any of these young balletomanes who besiege you with notes and bouquets?"
"But of course I'm not! You're not going to become jealous of me, I hope?"
"That," Rosing announced in a somber voice, "I shall always be—impossible to escape it."
"At least admit that I give you no cause?"
"But of course you don't, my angel! Only your temptations sometimes alarm me."
For the swarthy and elegant young gentlemen who besieged her with such persistence indeed appeared to



him in the light of temptations, and very serious temptations at that. But always, after such fears, he succeeded in calming himself. She was passionate, radiant, awake, only when she was dancing. In real life she still appeared to him colder than a changeling child, and it was only when he looked at her vivid mobile mouth that he once remembered having described her to himself as a passionnée.
After the triumph of Naples they visited Turin, Vienna, Budapest, Brussels and Berlin. In every one of these towns Varsovina in Les Elfes created a furore. When she danced in Brussels Rosing invited Martens, Silvercroys and Vanderkerk to be his guests at the theater. Afterward, contrary to Martens' predictions, they had supper together, and Lina exerted herself to be particularly charming. But somehow matters were not quite the same as before. However delightfully she might play the part, she was no longer the modest Hebe of the quai des Augustins, and everything about her, her ruby pendant, her darkened eyes, the sable on her cloak, aird Rosing's private carriage, all contrived to emphasize the change in their situations.
When they drove home together that night, Rosing remarked:
"How extraordinary it is, my child, that those men— although no doubt excellent fellows in their own way— should ever have been close friends of ours. At Bruges, indeed, I must have stagnated."
"Ah-ha! At last you're speaking the truth! And yet how often have you condemned me for less than that!"
He was ashamed, then. He said hastily:
"My dear Lina, you wilfully misunderstand me. Yes, indeed you do."
And he began to explain at great length that while he would always have a profound affection for his friends



of Bruges, he at the same time appreciated to the full his new life in that very different world in which he had previously been accustomed to exist.
"And which must inevitably alter the value of people as well as things. But you, my dear, have the unfortunate habit of inexplicably losing interest in your most intimate friends. When you do that, you simply cast them aside. You forget their whole existence. You would never, for instance, have thought of inviting those three men to the performance to-night. You would have been too careless to think of their pleasure, simply because you have not seen them for several months."
"We seem to be exactly the same," Lina told him scornfully.
"Let us not argue! For the love of Heaven let us not argue! Really, when one is tired one obtains little enough sympathy from you!"
"What about me? I am nearly always tired."
"Because you persistently overwork yourself," Rosing told her irritably.
"You taught me to do that in the first place," Lina reminded him.
"Lina, I entreat you!"
Her delicate profile, framed in the yellow tulle of her new Parisian bonnet, reproached him for some moments with its very aloofness, its air of withdrawal from this displeasing contact enforced by the motion of the rocking carriage; presently, as usual, he said, impulsively:
"My dear, I am a quarrelsome old man and you are very tired . . . and to-night you were exquisite . . . give me your hand."
It was cold, her hand, and smaller than a child's. She asked wistfully:
"Was I really good to-night?"
"Admirable!"



"Better than last night?"
"On the whole."
"Ah!"
She subsided with a sigh of relief. He continued:
"Your pirouettes, your arabesque, enchanted me."
"Ah!"
"You danced with poise and confidence. I repeat, you were admirable."
She was asleep.
They visited London, where she enjoyed a marked success, and where she flatly refused to discover her father, Mrs. Purdie or Madame Vanessi. They returned to Milan, where she had the supreme triumph of dancing at the Scala as prima ballerina. She appeared in Paris, where her ballet was abused, but where she herself was praised with passionate enthusiasm. Varsovina, the personality created by Rosing, was exactly a year old now. Already she stretched her wings, looked into the future, longed for fresh worlds to conquer.
At last came the offer of a year's tour in America. Why not? Had not Elssler, the intrepid, danced all over the United States, to return in triumph, laden with jewels and dollars?
And so, after much discussion, to America they went, accompanied by Franz Heinrich, business manager of the tour, by a young German Jew, Adolphe Weiss, who was to act as musical director, and by the nucleus of a corps de ballet. Again, as Rosing remarked, why not? America offered so many dollars.



Chapter 20
In New York, for the first time, Varsovina's spectacular good fortune deserted her. She danced, it is true, with great success; but on the very week of her début, a few hours after the dancers had gone home, the great theater was burned to the ground, and it seemed as though Monsieur Rosing and his wife must say farewell to those muchcoveted American dollars. And yet, to return to Europe with no contracts was unthinkable. In any case, if the glorious New York season was really to be wasted, there still remained the ten months' tour.
But this, unfortunately, was not to be the case. The American promoter of the tour chose, with singular lack of tact, this particular and inauspicious moment to become bankrupt. What was to be done? Rosing tore his hair.
And then the circus, that had succored Lina before, came once more to her aid.
Hiram P. Adams, America's most famous showman, took little time to realize that the new Russian dancer, properly advertised, might prove a big drawing-card. Abandoning forthwith his three circuses and his thirty traveling fairs, he arrived at Rosing's hotel to put forward his proposition.
Rosing at first recoiled in horror. His Varsovina, his pride, his prodigy, his glorious artist, managed by a circus proprietor! Hadn't she had enough to do with circuses in her life? And then, by degrees, he saw reason. Here, at last, after so many disappointments, were dollars, and Rosing, who respected dancing and little else in life, knew only too well that American money was not
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to be despised. He was, in fact, tremendously impressed by dollars.
And so Lina sallied forth to conquer America under the auspices of a man who instinctively compared her attractions with those of tumblers, trained poodles, performing fleas and Siamese twins. All of these, to Hiram P. Adams, were freaks, representing a means of livelihood. Russian dancers, who were docketed in his mind somewhere between the Siamese twins and the fleas, were, in his own private opinion (which he revealed only to Mrs. Adams) less entertaining and very definitely less skilful than acrobats. However, it seemed obvious to him that other people thought differently, and he dispatched Lina across the continent with every possible feeling of confidence. She was to dance Les Eljes, La Gitana, Roxana, La Péri and one or two other ballets.
Nor were his feelings of confidence in any way misplaced. The peculiar quality of Varsovina's dancing appealed, it seemed, to almost every type of person, from the miners of Colorado to the horse-breeders of Kentucky and the agriculturists of New England. To some she was a skilied artist distributing "culture" wherever she went, very much as a farmer scatters seed; to others she was a Lorelei, a sprite from fairy worlds, to others again merely a seductive young person who exhibited her legs. But of her popularity there was no doubt, and Mr. Hiram P. Adams, in the intervals of organizing mammoth circuses, never ceased congratulating himself upon his extraordinary acumen.
As for Lina, accustomed to dancing every other night upon a perfectly constructed stage, the tour, until she grew used to it, resembled nothing so much as a dancer's idea of heil. They played one-night stands. They visited towns where the only obtainable orchestra was a prehistorie piano abominably played, where the rickety stages,



covered with linoleum, made the dancers' feet burn like fire, where the surfaces of these same stages were perilously uneven, where the subterranean dressing-rooms disclosed themselves as evil-smelling kennels with broken window-panes, and where the audiences were still primitive enough to insist that the abbreviated skirts of the dancers were a sign of Parisian indecency. At first, until she grew accustomed to the one-night stands, they nearly killed her.
But always, wherever they were, in whatever strange and ugly town, in whatever primitive theater, she danced with all her heart and soul. These rustic conquests, often so awkwardly expressed, seemed odd indeed after the luscious adulation of European balletomanes, but she had trouped for twelve months with a traveling circus and understood instinctively, as Rosing never would, the mentality of the people for whom she was dancing.
"It is the hotels," Rosing sometimes complained, "the hotels and the food. These, I confess, defeat me. Ah, what barbarians!"
"The trains are worse," Lina insisted.
But she was so tired at night, when she boarded these same trains, that often she dropped off to sleep, like a collapsed doll, not even waking when her maid undressed her. She was frail and white and strained, but those who knew her best insisted that she was a creature of steel, tireless when they themselves were almost unconscious with fatigue.
Indeed, when the American tour was finished it was she herself who insisted upon accepting the offer made by Hiram P. Adams for a six months' whirlwind tour of Canada. Here conditions were, if anything, worse than those prevailing in the United States; in the big cities the arrangements made for the troupe were admirable, in the more remote regions there were hardships un-



dreamed of. She danced in towns that were little better than lumber camps, on stages so small that the actual tempo of the dances had frequently to be altered at the last moment, on stages made of hard wood, agonizing to those dancing on the pointes, on stages with slopes so steep that certain evolutions became exceedingly dangerous, and Rosing, watching from the wings, frequently feit sick and cold with apprehension.
"Never again, Lina, never again. To endanger your very limbs for these barbarians is not worth all the dollars there are in the world!"
"But it is," she said eagerly. "When we go back to Europe we can rent our own theaters, choose our own ballets, and give the performances we want, instead of being ordered about by the first impresario who comes along!"
During the terrifïc strain and hustle of these tours she became daily more dominant and he increasingly subdued. As he so often remarked, he was no longer very young, and the process of barnstorming to which they were subjected, the veritable hurricane of activity which whirled them remorsely from town to town, the glaring publicity, the unceasing clatfer and din which accompanied them everywhere they went, seemed daily to sap his strength, his energy, his very life-blood. And all appeals to Lina were useless. She was devoured by a very fury of ambition. She could not, would not rest.
When he reproached her, which was often, she protested, with every appearance of indignation:
"You taught me to work hard, didn't you? You told me to interest myself in my work and nothing else. And now that I'm doing it, now that I'm slaving so that one day I we—may have a ballet of our own, you find fault with me. I can't understand you. Really, I can't understand you."



"But, Lina, you will make yourself ill!"
"111! I never feit better in my life."
"You do not look it," Rosing pronounced. "You are pale as wax, and you have grown thinner."
"I teil you I never feit better in all my life."
Once again he experienced all the bewilderment of a Frankenstein. He shook his head and said helplessly:
"I can not argue with you. I am so tired!"
"Tired? But why didn't you teil me? You mustn't come down to the theater to-night. You mustn't think of it. And please will you rest now?"
"On the condition that you rest, too."
"I?" She shook her head. "I am going down early, to exercise at the bar."
"Then I shall go also," declared Rosing with the senseless obstinacy of exhaustion.
Lina, who had been combing her hair, now turned around the better to scrutinize him. His face looked gray and withered, his eyes sunken. She got up from her chair, went across to where he was sitting and knelt down beside him.
"Listen," she said coaxingly, "you will make me very unhappy if you refuse to take care of yourself. And you know that one can't do one's best if one is unhappy . . . it's different for me, this traveling—I'm young and strong, and I enjoy it. But if you insist on making yourself ill, I shall worry about you all the time, and that will be bad for both of us. Please try to sleep now, and then later, when you awake, come down to the theater if you still want to. Won't you do that?"
Her voice was caressing, but in the clear darkness of her eyes he could detect no softness, only that luminous steady look which he had learned to associate with intense preoccupation. Already her mind was busy evolving the problems of the evening, and although she talked to him



so kindly, he could not help feeling that secretly, somewhere in the depths of her unexplored, mysterious mind, she resented this intrusion into their busy life of his weakness, his pitiful inability to follow where she led.
"Very well," he said. He added, trying to make his voice sound casual: "Lina, forgive me for worrying you when we are both tired, but I would so much like to ask you something—you are still fond of me, aren't you? You don't regret our—our marriage?"
"Oh, really!"
She got up from the floor with the swift litheness that always gave him so much pleasure, walked across to the window and began to unbind the dark plait of her hair.
' Really," she said again, shaking her locks loose over her shoulders, "you are very bad, you know, and I shall have to scold you. . . . Listen, then, to this! Every day that we spend together increases my affection for you. that's a pretty speech, but I mean it with all my heart! And now listen to something else. ... I want you, if you come down to the theater, to speak to Weiss. Please teil him that he can't turn an adagio into an allegro, and that even if he could do such a thing, no one could dance to it."
Rosing protested wearily: "Weiss said last night that it is you yourself who have a mania for altering the tempo. And you know, my dear, that sometimes you make it difficult for him to follow you."
"Oh, never mind now. Please go to sleep, if it is only to please me."
But she continued, half to herself: "It's Weiss who is to blame."
And her thoughts were far from Rosing.



Chapter 21
When they returned to New York after an absence of nearly eighteen months, she was offered a large sum of money to dance for four months in the principal South American cities. Whereas she was enthusiastic about this offer, Rosing opposed the idea vehemently.
"But of course we must go. What do you mean? Can't Europe wait for another four months?"
"But, Lina, you don't understand! However important money may be, it doesn't mean everything in this world! There is such a thing as artistic appreciation, which you will find only in Europe, there is such a thing as keeping in touch with composers, choreographists, artists—with all the personnel of the ballet. Do you want to be forgotten when you return to Paris or Milan?"
She said, with complete sincerity: "They will soon remember me again. And with the money I have earned here and will earn in South America you know very well that I can dance where I please when I go home, hire theaters, engage the best dancers, the best choreographists, the best maitres de ballet."
"If you do that," he told her roughly, "you will soon be bankrupt. Sometimes, although I know that it is inexperience, you make me think that you are mad."
"Because you are accustomed to the State theaters of Russia, where matters are arranged very differently. But I want to dance for the whole world!"
"Already you've nearly achieved that." And he added, for he was annoyed by her obstinacy, "Sometimes it seems to me that you must be entirely Jewish, with no English in you at all. . . . In any case I see no thing English."
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"Well," she retorted, "you have often saïd to me that to be a great artist one must have at least a drop of Jewish blood."
They went, of course, to South America. He had no longer the strength to resist her. She, who had been when first he knew her so docile, so submissive, to all his wants, seemed every day to develop a stronger, fiercer will, to become every hour less dependent upon himself and upon his wishes. The coryphée was indeed stretching her wings; despite his very orders, before his very eyes, she seemed about to soar away, and he could do nothing to prevent her flight. He cculd only follow—at a distance, for he was tired, and she was very swift.
Once, in Buenos Aires, he broke down completely.
"Lina, you have betrayed me! You don't love me. You have never loved me. You only endured me for what I could teach you. Now that there is nothing left of that, you no longer even like me."
"That's not true. You know that's not true. I have always been fond of you—I always will be fond of you. But if you are talking of love, I must say this to you— you were never in love with me as a woman, but only as a dancer. You were in love with what you hoped that I should become. Well, I have become something, and yet you are not satisfied, so what more can I do? I'm doing all that you wanted of me, and it doesn't seem to please you. Nothing is right. I no longer know how to please you."
"Come back to Europe," he pleaded.
"And cancel these splendid contracts? What makes you ask such a thing? Surely you know that we must consider the future. And when we do get home only think of the people we can engage to write ballets for me."
And she recited a string of brilliant names.
When they went home!



She continued to dance with ravishing grace in a heat pronounced unendurable by her comrades. In Rio she was persuaded to give an additional al fresco performance to take place in the bull-ring, in the midst of which a temporary stage had been hastily erected. The boxes and palcos were crowded with the richest men, the most beautiful women of the city; down below, in the blinding whiteness of the sunshine, Varsovina danced, more graceful in her gauzy petticoats than any sylphide, on a spot where, the day before, blood had been spilled, and men and beasts atrociously mangled amid the cheers of this same vociferous crowd.
She had quarreled with Rosing about the wisdom of performing in the bull-ring, and it was against his wishes that she had accepted the engagement. All his shrewd theatrical instincts demanded that his dancer should be exhibited only on the stage, that she should be segregated behind footlights, and etherealized with all the crystalline glamour of limelight; that she should dance in broad daylight, in an arena dedicated to violent and gory sports, shocked him to the very core of his being, and he refused majestically, indignantly, to be present at the performance.
But he need have had no fear. The experiment was entirely successful. The applause was vociferous; hats and flowers were tossed frantically into the ring; she was presented to an eminent political personage who congratulated her, at great length, in unctuous French; she changed her dress in the white-washed chamber where the tor er os were wont to bedizen themselves in their jewels and sequins; when she drove back to the hotel her carriage was heaped high with syringas, hybiscus, lilies, carnations, and camellias, and she herself, in her pale green dress and bonnet, was scarcely to be distinguished amid these masses of brilliant and sweet-smelling blossom.



When she arrived at the hotel her excitement had begun to subside, and she realized with irritation that her exertions in the blazing sunshine had exhausted her more than she had at first supposed.
"Where is Monsieur?"
"Monsieur is in his room. He has not been out this afternoon."
She climbed the stairs slowly, supporting herself by the banister-rail. She hoped with all her heart that he would be in a good humour. The thought of another scene was unbearable to her.
"I'm too tired—far too tired!"
She opened the sitting-room door cautiously. It was empty. He was in the bedroom. She called to him, trying to make her voice sound gay, then, as he did not answer, she went in search of him.
The shutters were down, so that the room blinked at her in a greenish twilight. At first she could not see him, then, as her eyes became accustomed to the dusk, she perceived to her horror that he lay huddled uncomfortably on the fioor, between the two beds. One hand grasped at his counterpane, as though he had guessed that he were falling and had tried, pitifully enough, to steady himself; his face when she turned it up toward her was ashen-gray, with staring eyes and clenched mouth. Both his face and his hand were strangely cold in the thick damp heat of the tropical evening, and this coldness told her immediately that he was dead, that he had been dead for some hours.
For a few moments she continued to kneel in complete immobility beside him. During those moments she became as still, as cold, as he was; the sight of him seemed temporarily to have taken her own life away from her, and except for the buzzing of mosquitoes at the window the dim room was stagnant with the silence of death.



Then, as swiftly as it had fled, her vitality came ebbing back; she got quickly to her feet, went into the sittingroom, rang the bell and took off her bonnet.
When her maid came she asked that Heinrich, the manager, should be sent to her immediately.
The maid hesitated.
"Mademoiselle is looking very tired. Perhaps "
"No. I am all right. But Monsieur Heinrich is to come at once. Wherever he is, you must find him."
Ten minutes later, when Heinrich appeared, she was sitting in an armchair with her back to the window, and her hands folded in her lap. Against the lacquer-black of her hair her face was whiter than a waxen candle, and there were deep stains, like bruises, beneath her eyes.
Heinrich began affably: "I suspect you're exhausted, after dancing in such sun. But what a brilliant success! Have you told "
She interrupted him in a voice the clearness of which disconcerted even herself. She said:
"Heinrich, Rosing is dead. He's in the next room. I found him. Please go and look."
"What nonsense are you talking? Only three hours ago "
"Oh, please do what I teil you."
With one glance at her he went into the bedroom. He was not there long. When he came out she was sitting as he had left her.
"Lina "
"It's true, isn't it? He is dead, isn't he?"
Heinrich was a young man with a high forehead and a reddish beard. His face, usually so ruddy, now looked pasty, like cheese.
"My poor child, my poor Lina!"
She repeated monotonously: "I found him. Just now. I knew he was dead. I found him when I came in."



"In any case, we shall call in a doctor. At once! Immediately!"
He pealed the bell.
"That isn't any use," Lina told him from some immense lonely height of superior knowledge, "what good can a doctor do? Doctors can't bring dead people back to life."
The maid came in.
"Go down-stairs," Heinrich shouted at her, "go downstairs immediately and send for a doctor! Monsieur is seriously ill."
"Monsieur is dead," Lina suddenly contradicted in a loud strong voice that made them both start.
The maid immediately burst into hysterical, violent sobbing. Heinrich, swearing, took her by the shoulders and pushed her out of the room. He went over to Lina, who continued to sit, very erect, her feet crossed, in all the state of her big armchair. He took her hand and patted it awkwardly. He began, in a soothing tone:
"Let us try to think how and when this frightful thing could have happened. . . . When did you last see him? Just before we left for the Plaza de Toros?"
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, looked vaguely at him, but said nothing. He waited for a moment, then, as she still remained silent, he continued, half to himself:
"He must have died shortly afterward, perhaps while we were still on our way. And yet this morning, when I saw him, he looked as always. Very often I have seen him appear more tired."
"It was the heat," Lina pronounced abruptly.
"The heat?" Heinrich repeated stupidly. His own face was streaming with perspiration, but she herself looked so pinched, so bleak, so frozen, that it was really difficult for him to believe that they were either of them stifling in the fury of a tropical summer.



"Yes, the heat," she repeated, "he hated it—he always hated it. And once he told me that his heart was weak."
"Alors, que voulez-vous?" Heinrich said helplessly.
At this moment, to his extreme relief, the door was burst open, and Weiss, the musical director, rushed into the room with tears streaming down his fat cheeks.
"My poor Mademoiselle Lina, I am overwhelmed, I am desolated, I am distraught, my heart bleeds for you!"
"Don't make so much noise," Heinrich protested at the iop of his voice.
"But one is only human! One is not made of stone! This tragedy, this awful bereavement, moves me profoundly, yes, I repeat, profoundly! I mourn not only the loss of a friend, but also the loss of "
"Tais-toi, a la fin!" Heinrich commanded, running his fingers through his hair, and casting an anguished glance at the stony form of Lina.
But Weiss continued to cry.
Lina asked suddenly, in that strong disconcerting voice: "When can I dance again?"
Weiss stopped crying. Heinrich answered, af ter an embarrassed pause:
"But . . . if you wish already to discuss these matters . . . it is difficult to say . . . les convenances must be observed. . . ."
"But when? Next week? The week after?"
"Really, I haven't thought . . . all this is so shocking."
She said then, staring at him with her tired strained eyes: "It's because, if I don't dance, if I have nothing to do, this will send me mad. If I have to sit here, in this chair, thinking about it all the time, I can't endure it. If I have to dance, if I have to work hard, if I have to go down to the theater, I shall feel better. I must dance as soon as ever I can, and you must arrange that for me. I shall fulfil my contracts."
"But, my dear Lina "



She repeated harshly: "Didn't you hear what I said? I shall fulfil my contracts."
Later, when the doctor had been, only to disclose that Rosing's death was due to heart failure, she sat listlessly alone in another sitting-room with Heinrich and Weiss pressing quantities of unwanted food upon her. Then it was, in the midst of pretending to eat, that she remembered the real Rosing, not Rosing her husband, weary, querulous, inadequate, but the Rosing of Bruges, Rosing her master, her savior, the Rosing who had first discovered her genius, who had taught her all he knew, who had cared for her, fed her, gambled on her immature talent, who had put his whole heart and soul into this strange business of making her a dancer.
She thought of the salon at Bruges—its ikons, its swarming candles, its rosy fire, and of Rosing himself standing in the salon, the tassel of his bonnet-grec most violently agitated as he scraped away on his fiddle at some tinkling, elusive air of Rossini or Verdi.
Thinking of these things, evoking these tunes, somehow caused her throat to become most violently constricted; she put her head on the table and wept, mourning her husband, as though her heart would break.
But that she herself, by her passion for overwork, her insistence upon a savage routine, her determination to wrest every cent, every peso, from wild and barbarous lands, had in any way contributed to his death, never once occurred to her. Atalanta-like, she had outstripped him in their race, being, like Atalanta herself, young and fleet of foot and tireless, while he, unable to keep up, had fallen by the way.
But even while she wept she found some consolation in the thought, which constantly recurred to her: "At least he lived to see me famous. He lived to see me a prima ballerina."



Chapter 22
In 1850, when Lina Varsovina returned to Paris from America, she found herself a comparatively rich woman. In addition to the money made during her tours, it was discovered that Rosing's will left everything, including the house in Bruges, to his widow. Lina closed the house, pensioned Justine, and sent for Marie, whom she intended to transform into her personal maid.
She then retired to a comfortable hotel and set about correcting the impression prevalent in Paris—that she was an infant prodigy who had failed to fulfil the amazing promise of her early youth. The French were fïckle. Varsovina had vanished for so long that every one had long ago decided there must be something suspicious about this protracted absence.
She at last accepted an engagement, not at the Opera, but at a smaller, less opulent theater, and appeared there in the ballet La Rose Animée. At first her season created little attention: then, after the first week and a few reluctantly enthusiastic notices, Varsovina was discovered anew, and once more it became the fashion to swoon with rapture at the graces of this ethereal dancer.
One night when she was in her dressing-room a card was brought to her upon which was inscribed the name of a man well-known in the Paris of this time. He was a certain Monsieur Nordstrom, a Swedish diplomat, and he begged for the honor of Mademoiselle Varsovina's company at supper that evening. Lina reflected; the name meant nothing to her, and she had no particular desire to meet this man; at the same time she was lonely, and tired of being lonely; the Neapolitan days of conjugal devotion
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were over and done with for ever, there was no one, now, to keep her from doing as she pleased. She made certain inquiries, af ter which she accepted Nordstrom's invitation.
He called for her after the ballet, a tall florid-looking man of about thirty-five, handsome in a burly fashion, with an amiable smile and eyes of such a bright hot blue that their burning stare reminded her of nothing so much as the heavy skies of South America. They went to supper at the Maison-d'Or, where Nordstrom, carefully observing the conventions of the period, had ordered a private room, champagne and flowers. Lina, unaccustomed to these modish ways, was secretly impressed by the alcove itself, with all its mysteries of draped red curtains, by the gilt chairs, the festive appearance of the supper table, with its gleaming linen, its clusters of bright carnations, its basket of glowing hothouse fruit, its gold-necked bottle nestling luxuriously in an ice-bucket. Her spirits rose like quicksilver, and she at once forgot that she was tired.
"What a fascinating dress," said Nordstrom casually, giving her shawl to the waiter. It was of black velvet, trimmed with lace, and made her neck and shoulders seem paler, more luminous, than ivory.
"I am glad," she said, "that you like it. But it doesn't come from Paris. I got it several months ago, in New York."
"It is fascinating," he said again. He added: "You know, Mademoiselle, seeing you opposite me here, eating your supper so demurely, dressed in black velvet and lace, produces upon me a most peculiar effect. It makes me feel I am dreaming. Shall I teil you why?"
"Please," said Lina, who was hungry, and who did not want to talk until her appetite was satisfied.
"Ah, you're curious," said Nordstrom, delighted. He leaned forward and continued:



"On the stage, while you dance, you are a creature of the elves, unreal, immortal. If I had been a Catholic, watching you to-night, I'd have crossed myself. You are like no woman I have ever seen before. I made up my mind that I must see you as you are in real life, and I assured myself that I would be disappointed. I told myself that I must expect a pale, emaciated, badly dressed little creature, a Russian Jewess with bad teeth. Yes, wasn't that strange? I actually persuaded myself that you would have bad teeth! I waited for you with my heart beating!"
"Oh, come now," she said, "Fm not so bad as all that!"
"So bad! . . . But you must please let me finish! You are the most exquisite creature that I have ever seen. You are so small, so delicate, so perfect, that I almost believe you are made of china. And yet, having seen you dance, I still prefer my first theory, that you are a being from another world. You'11 not bewitch me, will you?"
He leaned across the table, staring at her with hot, restless blue eyes. His face was flushed, and Lina, the observant, decided that although he was handsome now, he would soon become stout.
"No, indeed I won't," she said, laughing.
"That's a splendid ruby you wear round your neck. Where did you plunder it?"
"I've had it ever since I made my début."
"Would you like some earrings to match it?"
"How rich are you?" she asked practically.
Nordstrom exploded with laughter.
"You're not such a fairy as I thought, Lina Varsovina! I observe that, however ethereal you may appear, you also possess a certain elemental shrewdness. Do you want me to bedizen you with rubies?"
"No. I don't want any more rubies."
"Then what?"



She said simply: "If you are going to give me jewelry, at all, I would rather have pearls. That's all."
"Indeed!"
He was not quite sure how to treat her. After the more florid charms of so many rowdy, exuberant Maries, Yvettes, Ginas and Rosalies, this strange little being, with her smooth dark head, her airs of delicacy and refinement, her complete self-possession, and her impeccable manners, really astonished him. He inquired, still staring at her:
"Do you think that you could love me?"
Lina looked at him thoughtfully. She was quite sure that she could not do anything of the sort. She had never loved Nurdo, and although she had respected Rosing she had feit no love for him, only gratitude. She supposed that if Nordstrom proved himself kind and generous she would be grateful to him, and in any case she would be glad of his company, having been lonely and depressed since her return to Europe.
He said, a little embarrassed by her intent scrutiny: "Are you reading my mind, Lina Varsovina? Are you still thinking about your pearls? Or are you wondering whether you'11 be happy with me?"
"None of those. I was wondering how to answer your question."
"If you have any doubts," he said, "as to my position, my character, my finances, anything you may want to know, you are always at liberty to make inquiries."
"Oh," she said, "I have already done so. At the theater, before I accepted your invitation to-night."
"Indeed! You waste no time, Mademoiselle. And I hope that your information was satisfactory?"
"Very."
"Then what's the trouble? Am I such a monster?"
"No." She looked at him, smiling, and put her hand on his. "Indeed, no, you're not. I will love you, if



you really want me to, only one thing must be understood between us, and that is that you must never, on any account whatever, interfere with my work or with my practising. Otherwise it will be of no use, and we shall . have to part. Do you understand?"
"Perfectly," he said, laughing again. "You know, Lina, you are not the first theatrical young lady with whom I've enjoyed an intimate friendship."
"It's not at all the same," she protested, and added, as though rebuking him: "You must never forget that I'm a dancer."
"A great dancer," Nordstrom corrected courteously, and raised his glass. He asked, after a pause:
"Teil me, Lina, how easily do you fall in love?"
"I've told you," she said, "that I am going to love you. That's settled. So why bother?"
"I know what you have told me, and it's very charming of you, and I have no doubt that we shall make each other happy, but when I talked of falling in love I was referring, not to a delightful arrangement such as the one we are about to conclude, but to another, more primitive and less discriminating emotion. An emotion, my dear, that is beyond our control. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, I understand you," Lina said. "You are wondering whether or not I will be faithful to you. Well, set your mind at rest. I will be faithful. I don't know anything of the emotions you have been talking about. I don't lose my heart wildly, for no reason. I have always been too busy. When I say that I'll love you, I mean to do it, to the best of my ability. You'11 have no cause for complaint, I promise you. There! Are you content?"
Nordstrom was rich; in a few weeks Lina moved from her hotel to a luxuriously furnished apartment in the rue d'Antin. Here, in an atmosphere of Boule, Sèvres vases,



rosewood furniture and hothouse flowers, she lived comfortably and happily enough to justify her decision.
Nordstrom was rich, but he was also thoughtful and generous. He kept to his promise of never interfering with her work. He drank too much, and sometimes, when he was under the influence of brandy, he became rough and bad-tempered, but he was invariably contrite after these bouts, and his penitence took the form of an expensive present. He considered that a gift of jewelry atoned for any sin, and this maxim possibly accounted for his popularity with women. He seemed to understand Lina perfectly. She was a child, a baby, to be petted, but she was also a great artist, to be respected, and she was also a woman from whom to seek consolation and affection. He was so much more attractive than either of the two men who had loved her before that she became very fond of him; very dependent upon him, and very resentful when he was unable, for some social reason or other, to take her out to supper.
When her season ended she had three weeks' holiday before beginning an engagement at the Opera. Nordstrom obtained leave, and took her to Biarritz. She was happier, there, than she had ever been before. Perhaps, too, she came near to falling in love with him.
She had never, that she could remember, had so long a holiday in all her life, and this period, spent so pleasantly, so lazily, and yet so amorously, in the toy villa that he had taken for her, was a time of enchantment that slid past with a swiftness that was almost bewildering.
And Nordstrom was gentier, more thoughtful, than she had ever known him. He did not drink during their sojourn in Biarritz, he took her driving every day, and there in the cool of the pine woods, among the reddish sterns and somber bloom of these trees, they picnicked



gaily enough, lying afterward for hours, drowsy and content, in each other's arms.
Once she said, impulsively: "I love you!"
He answered, smiling: "Lina, I find you adorable, for I know that you believe what you are saying to me."
"I teil you I love you. What's wrong with that?"
"Nothing, my angel. But one day you will really love some one, and then you'11 find that it will not even be necessary to say those words: 'I love you.' "
"I don't understand."
"I know. Never mind. Go on loving me in your own way. You are enchanting."
"You are funny."
And she feil asleep.



Chapter 23
She was at the Opera, dancing Le Lac de Fées, and Nordstrom seemed more devoted than ever. She had contracts arranged for Naples, Turin, Vienna and Berlin, and she was busy substantiating the legend that Varsovina, when she danced, was a being eerie, unearthly, a spirit floating across the stage from the moonlight of another, fairy world. There were critics who regretted Fanny Elssler. Elssler, they said, was a woman, a living creature of flesh and blood, and Elssler had never permitted any one to forget her mortality. This Varsovina, winged, ephemeral, transparent as a spirit, always the phantom princess of some enchanted realm peopled with sylphs, dryads, shadows and dreams, was sexless, when she danced, and somehow a little sinister; she was less tangible, they thought, than the ghost of a dead love, she was a wraith, beckoning to them from somewhere very far away.
And if the fairy came to life at the rue d'Antin, and entertained for Nordstrom and his friends on the nights when she was not dancing, there were those who would not have believed you, had you told them she laughed on these occasions, and was gay, and drank champagne, and wore her pearls. For Lina these were happy nights.
She met charming and brilliant men who flattered her, and who, when they had become a little drunk, forgot all about their intelligence and insisted upon drinking her health from the tiny pink satin ballet shoes littered about in her bedroom. She met women, kept women like herself, but without her genius, cheerful, practical, incomprehensible French cocottes who drew her into corners and
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whispered good advice into her ears. Sometimes she laughed at them.
"Tromper Nordstrom? But I adore the creature! Un amant de cceur? I wouldn't know what to do with one!"
Once her lover introduced her to a young Frenchman with a gay wide smile and slanting eyes. He was the Comte de Beauvais. She hesitated: something about his face was strangely familiar. As she gazed at him, puzzled, he reminded her of an earlier meeting.
"Madame la Fée! Several years ago—Bruges—the Carnival! You leaned out of your window in a mulberry dress, and waved your hand at me. If you will permit me to say so, you were adorable. I was a student, and very drunk . . . imagine, as things have turned out . . . I wanted you to dance with me! And now I have to pay a small fortune to see you dance!"
He was rich and spoiled and much attracted by her. He wanted to supplant Nordstrom. But Lina only laughed at him.
Sometimes, on fine days, they went picnicking, with a swarm of Nordstrom's friends. It was easy, in 1850, to leave Paris behind and seek the countryside. The women, on these occasions, drove in barouches, and were more gaily bright in their bonnets and swirling skirts than a cluster of sweet-peas or fuschias; the men rode beside them, in overall trousers, and beaver hats; there was much clattering of horses' hooves and champing of bits, and peals of laughter, and there was more merriment, Lina thought, than she had ever believed existed in the world. How happy they were, and how brief, the passionate, sweet-smelling days of spring! Once they dined beneath the chestnut trees of Passy, when blossom was falling from the trees, and Nordstrom, enraptured, held Lina in his arms until she was covered, as though by a mantle, in a snowdrift of fragrant bloom that buried both in the feathery sweetness of the falling blossom.



And then, in the midst of all this gaiety, came the horror that at first she would not, could not, believe.
It was impossible, she thought, that anything so frightful could have happened to her. At first she continued as though she had noticed nothing, convinced that if she ignored her fears all would be well. Then came a period of anguish, lasting three days, during the course of which she refused to see her lover. And then, when she was certain, when her fate seemed to her irrevocable, she summoned him.
He arrived, much agitated, and found her waiting for him in her salon, whiter, more stony, than the diamond ring he had given her only a week ago.
"Lina! I have been tormented! Why wouldn't you see me? Have you been ill?"
"Not exactly," she said in a dry tone of voice. She asked him to sit down.
"But Lina, my little angel!"
"Please don't come near me. I want to talk to you."
And she resumed, in the same cold voice:
"Something has happened to me. Something so dreadful that we have never even spoken of it, and I don't know what to say or do. . . . I've been thinking during the last few days—that's why I wouldn't receive you. Listen. I'm going to have a child."
She was observant, and always had been; she noticed at once, before he had time to compose his face, the swift repulsion that for one fraction of a second contorted it. He said then, anxiously, soothingly:
"My dear, are you quite sure? Don't you think it may be your imagination? A doctor "
"I've seen a doctor," she said harshly. She could neither forgive nor understand that revolted, almost enraged expression, so swiftly suppressed, that had not escaped her vigilant eye.
"And the doctor?"



"He says that I'm right. I think," she continued, "that I shall go out of my mind. It's not only that I must cancel my foreign contracts. It's the fact that if anything goes wrong I shall never be able to dance again. And I must wait eight months to know that. Eight months from my life, from a dancer's life! I've not slept, Nordstrom, for three nights!"
He had grown very red. He looked sheepish, too, and avoided her eyes. He muttered some words that she could not hear.
"What do you say? What are you going to do about it?"
Her voice was sharp. He got up and walked across to the window, plunging his hands in his pockets and staring moodily down into the street.
"My poor child," he said at length, "it seems to me that the only thing to do is to be brave, and to reflect that eight months is not after all a life-time."
"But that's exactly what it is," Lina persisted, "when it's a question of a dancer and of her contracts. Besides, I may be very ill, so ill that I can not dance again for many more months. My whole career may be ruined by this. It's no use telling me to be brave."
He turned to look at her then. Her white stony face and dark-ringed eyes gave her a look of hardness to which he was unaccustomed, yet her hands, folded on her lap, fidgeted nervously with her handkerchief. She was obviously distraught, controlling herself only by a tremendous effort. And indeed, had he himself been less infuriated, he would have realized her situation to be, at the best, highly incongruous; the phenomenon of nature, so placidly endured by simpler women, can only be described as most infernally unsuited to the ladies of the ballet; maternity was not, nor ever has been, permitted to sylphides.



"At least," said he, trying to console her, "you will be able to dance for another month."
She flew at him, then, like a fury.
"Yes, here, at the Opera! Of what use is that? But Naples! Naples, where I made my début! Do you realize what it means to me to give up Naples?"
"The truth is," said Nordstrom, his voice growing hard, "that you like only one thing in life, and that is your dancing. Everything else in the world must be sacrificed to that. Everything. Even your lovers. You are a little inhuman, my dear."
She rose to her feet then, with much swirling of tartan skirts.
"At least," she said, "I am grateful for never having been in love with you, Nordstrom. Had I been, I think the loathing that I saw on your face when I told you my news just now would have killed me. As it is, I'm entirely indifferent."
He began to bluster.
"Oh, don't shout at me," she said, "my head still aches. I've had no sleep, and I'm dancing to-night. Perhaps you had better go, and let me rest."
Nordstrom weakened.
"But, Lina! You're surely not going to give me my congé like this, after all the happiness that we have enjoyed together?"
"Oh," she said, still looking at him resentfully, "you can do something to help me, if you feel inclined . . . and really, there's no reason why you shouldn't. You are the father of this child."
Once again she surprised upon his face the disgusted expression that so much irritated her.
"All this must be very distasteful to you," she told him sardonically.
Nordstrom shrugged his shoulders. He went across to



the writing-table, sat down, produced his check-book, and wrote for a moment.
"Lina ... I think you will agree that I'm treating you generously. Even if you were penniless, which you are not, the provision that I'm making for you should be adequate for this next year."
She took the check from him, looked at it, folded it and placed it carefully in her bag.
"Thank you. And now, good-by."
She held out her hand.
"My dear, aren't you going to say farewell a little
more gracefully?"
"No. There's no longer any need for gracefulness between you and me. We have found each other out. Perhaps we are a little alike."
"Then good-by."
He kissed her hand with his usual courtesy.
At the door he paused.
"At least, Lina, you must allow me to thank you for your adorable companionship and for all the joy that you've given me this last eight months."
"Yes," said she, "it's a pity everything is spoiled. But it can't be helped. Good-by."
"Good-by, Lina."
A slam of the door shut him out of her life for ever.



Chapt er 24
When her season at the Opera was finished she retired, with Marie, to a little villa she had taken down at Fontainebleau. Here she rusticated. Her only visitors, and the only people who knew her secret, were her professional associates, Heinrich and Weiss. Heinrich, cancelling her contracts, had proclaimed to the world that Varsovina must rest for several months, to nurse an injured knee. It would never do, said Heinrich, for a dancer of her ethereal appeal in any way to be associated with maternity.
"How shameful," Lina told him, "you make my condition appear. Even more shameful than it actually is."
But the visits of these two comrades did her more good than anything else, for they insisted upon planning a new ballet in which she was to make a triumphant reappearance after the birth of her child.
"Listen, Lina. This is the famous story of the Ondine, the Water-Spirit, with fresh choreography specially adapted to your own personality. As it stands, the ballet is in six tableaux, the first one of which is called the Shell. Other scenes take place under the sea. And, Lina, the Ondine, the Naiad, might have been especially created for you to dance! She's unearthly, treacherous, fascinating. Now listen "
And so they talked and talked and talked, while outside, in the forest, mist washed against the dank silver of the great beech sterns, and the autumn sky, darker than steel, hung low and brooding over the roof of this toy villa, nestling, like the fairy cottage of Hansel and Gretel, against the boles of huge and ancient trees.
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And they were shut away, as though upon a desert island.
Not far away, in Paris, a president was stepping firmly forward toward the goal that was to make him Emperor of the French, and in the meaner streets of the city crowds of people collected daily to sing with all the force of their lungs:
Nous l'aurons!
Nous l'aurons!
Louis Napoléon!
The elegant Monsieur de Morny attended first nights, as had even been his custom, the Prince-President entertained on Monday evenings at the Elysée, there was much gossiping at the Jockey Club, the army waited to shout "Vive l Empereur" and the history of France was changing all the time.
But in the little villa at Fontainebleau no one talked politics and no one thought very much about the third Napoleon. They talked ballet, music and then more ballet, and Heinrich feit himself rewarded when Lina's white face lit up, and her eyes danced, and sometimes, when she was much excited, her fingers sprang to life and mimed the movements of the Ondine on her lap.
"That pas d'entramement! It fascinates me!"
And then her face would cloud and she would shake her head and say sullenly: "But what's the use? Who knows what may happen to me. A dancer's not made to bear children. I may die—worse, I may be an invalid for life. What's the use of planning the future?"
"Now, Lina," Heinrich would scold her, "that is naughty, and it's forbidden to talk in such a wicked manner."
"Ah," said she, "you can stop me talking, you can't stop me thinking."



Winter. In Paris there was one excitement after another. The Deux-Déqembre. Vive l'Empereur! The projected evacuation of the Elysée for the Tuileries. The dawn of a Second Empire.
At Fontainebleau the rain dripped in slanting silver rods, and the mist was sea-gray, and Lina's pretty villa, fashioned so daintily for pleasant summer days, looked more desolate than a box of candy that has been left all night in the garden. She herself, in a nervous fit, banished every mirror from her house.
"Don't bring them near me! I don't want to see myself. Oh, God, oh, God, who would ever think that this body belonged to a dancer?"
And Heinrich continued to send diplomatic messages all over Europe to the effect that Varsovina's knee was still causing anxiety to her medical advisers. Varsovina's knee! It has long since become famous in the history of ballet.
The winter dragged on interminably, and at last even the Ondine lost power to charm her future interpreter.
"These dancers," complained Heinrich to Weiss, mopping his face, "oh, why can't they remain celibate? Dans la dance il n'y a que les demoiselles. That's what their teachers teil them in the beginning and God knows they might as well save their breath. As for the death of Rosing—ah, what a misfortune! What a shocking, irreparable, appalling misfortune!"
When spring came to Fontainebleau in a flood of pale cold sunshine, and the mists cleared, and a greenish haze crept over the naked boughs of the trees, and primroses paler even than the sunshine clustered in the secret mossy glades of the forest, Lina Varsovina gave birth to a son. The doctor, summoned by Heinrich, imagined that he was attending an Englishwoman named Mrs. Varley. Marie was completely trustworthy. As for the midwife, this ex-



cellent woman had no idea that she was assisting at an event so historie as the accouchement of a sylphide.
The unwanted baby was small, puny and exceedingly fretful. Lina called it Paul.
"Paul what?" Heinrich wanted to know.
"Paul Varsovin, of course."
"Do you love this baby?" he asked inquisitively.
"No." But she resumed, after a pause, "I am sorry for it. Poor little thing, no one wants it. And when I was little, no one wanted me. Really, Heinrich, I assure you, no one wanted me! And so this child, this little Paul, shall have everything to make him happy."
"Are you taking him back to Paris?" pursued Heinrich.
"To the rue d'Antin? Are you mad? No. He is to live here, with his nurse. And now let us talk about the Ondine."
"But, Lina, how can you afford to keep up two establishments and at the same time spend money on the décor and the choreography of this new ballet?"
"Oh, there are ways and means," she answered.
"I have no wish to interfere with your private life "
"Well, you are interfering with it," Lina pointed out, "so please stop, or I shall have to send you away."
Within three weeks of the baby's birth she was working at the bar, her energy redoubled by the long months of idleness. She was slimmer, more graceful than she had ever been before, and her long rest seemed to have given her a luster, a polish, that improved her looks quite remarkably.
"Varsovina is almost beautiful," said Weiss one day to Heinrich. "She always reminds me of jade, perhaps because she is clear-cut, as though she were carved from stone, but now it is as though the white jade of her skin had a light burning behind it. And her hair is black jade. Really she is beautiful!"



"Young De Beauvais would agree with you," said Heinrich sardonically, and added, "I regret the death of Rosing more and more every day."
"Rosing had no control over her."
"At least she respected him. But now she respects no one. No one, that is, except Varsovina."
"She is right to respect herself," Weiss argued. "She has genius."
"My dear Weiss, no one would believe you thought that who has ever seen you arguing with her over a score."
"Because she insists that she knows more about music than I do. And that," Weiss concluded feelingly, "is nothing short of absurd."
In her salon at the rue d'Antin Lina was arguing with the young Comte de Beauvais.
"You must understand, Pierre, that while I am arranging this important ballet, and later on, while I am rehearsing, I have neither the time nor the inclination to go to supper-parties. If you are really unable to realize this, it is no use our continuing together, and if I thought that we must part, then I assure you that I would be very sorry. But there is no alternative."
De Beauvais muttered, like a sulky schoolboy: "You are cruel to me, Lina. I only pester you because I love you so much, because I want to see you all the time. Surely you understand that?"
"I do," she said untruthfully, "and you can imagine that no one dislikes our separations more than I do. But a ballerina must make these sacrifices, and I have long ago accustomed myself to them. One must be courageous!"
"Oh," he sighed, "I wish that you were not a famous dancer!"
"Now why do you say that?" and she sat down at the piano, trying to play with one finger the pas d'entraine-



ment from the new ballet. "If Nordstrom had not seen me dance, we would never have made friends, and then you would never have met me."
"You forget Bruges, and Carnival, and you in your red dress, waving to me across the canal."
Lina burst out laughing.
"Now what is it?" he asked reproachfully.
"You're so sentimental! You're so sentimental! Listen, here's a tune af ter your own heart, only I play so badly, and you must forgive me. But listen."
And she began to play, humming beneath her breath, the love-song from the opera Mignon. It was dusk, and they had not yet lighted the candles, but glowing embers from the fire cast a dull gleam upon the bois de rose furniture and played strange tricks of light and shadow about the ivory of Lina's neck, and the jetty ringlets of her hair. And her dress, that was of stiff amber silk, dragged away from the purity of her young shoulders, reflected the firelight as though it were made of sunshine.
De Beauvais stole up behind her and caught her hands; the song from Mignon broke off in a crash and jumble of discords.
"Lina, my sweet, beautiful Lina, I love you so much! I have loved you since first I saw you laughing at your window in Bruges. You may tease me for being sentimental, if you like, but you know it's true."
A bell pealed at that moment, the bell of the front door. Lina swung round on the piano stool, pulling her hands away from her lover's eager grasp.
"You must go now, Pierre. That's Heinrich, my manager, with whom I have an appointment.
"But, Lina, you are impossible! I never see you! You can't work all the time—you'11 kill yourself! Oh, please have supper with me to-night, either here or anywhere you like, but I entreat you not to refuse me!



"Not to-night," said she in the silken voice that he had learned to associate with a most incredible obstinacy, "after the ballet, whenever you like, but not until then. I am so sorry, Pierre, but I must really be firm. After the ballet!"
After the ballet! It seemed to De Beauvais, a youth of considerable impatience, that these three words created between them a glacial barrier that he would never surmount.
He thought, desolate, as others had thought before him:
"She doesn't love me. She loves only her dancing."
And he went slowly away from the rue d'Antin, while Lina, who had already forgotten his existence, discussed with Heinrich the merits of a new, expensive maitre de ballet.



Chapter 25
The curtain rose upon the ballet of The Ondine at about the same time as it rose upon a greater scene, played on a greater stage—a tragedy known to history as the Second Empire. In Lina's mind the first wild success of her new ballet would always be associated with the presence at her theater of such fantastic, fairy-tale figures as Monsieur de Morny, Saint-Arnaud, Persigny and Magnan. Once more there were to be seen officers in gay uniforms, and very often the Ondine danced before an audience blue and silver with the magnificence of the Cent-Gardes' new Imperial dress.
"Really, how agreeable it is to have an Emperor once more!" commented, with every demonstration of satisfaction, Lina's acquaintances of the demi-monde. What they actually meant was that they themselves derived a certain importance from supping at the Maison-d'Or or the Café Anglais in the company of these superb operabouffe males in their gaudy uniforms that were reminiscent of nothing so much as the remote days of Murat's prime. Braided dolmans, busbies, helmets, shakoes, green epaulettes, wasp waists and ferocious mustaches seethed everywhere in Paris; champagne flowed, music tinkled, every one danced, and the cafés of Paris were filled night and day with the echoes of an almost hysterical laughter. Had ever a city been so gay?
As for Lina and her ballet, they had both become fashionable, and the Ondine was to achieve for this ballerina during the earlier part of her career what the Sylphide had achieved for Taglioni; the Gipsy for Elssler, and what, many, many years later, the Swan was to
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achieve for yet another great dancer. The pas d'entrainement, with which the eerie child of the waves fascinates the fisher-boy, was for years to remain Varsovina's supreme triumph. although the pas de l'ombre, that exquisite dance in which the Naiad, capricious, wanton, unearthly, lures her mortal rival into the water, was to strike many who saw it as the greatest expression of a dancer almost terrifying in her very intangibility. For the Ondine was in many respects Hans Andersen's little Mermaid, she who, lacking a soul, must at any moment dissolve into foam and vanish for ever from mortal eyes. And after the ballet, when she took call after call, her enthusiasts pelted the stage with such a profusion of white camellias that the dancer's silver sandals were almost buried beneath a snowdrift of these blooms. The clouds of gauze and tulle in which she danced were also in their turn to enjoy a modish popularity; it became the fashion for the pretty ladies of the Second Empire to demand from their couturiers dresses a la Naiade, which meant that these charming slaves of fashion floated about Paris trying with all their might to appear tremendously ethereal and ghostly.
And Lina herself was fêted now, and supped with Monsieur de Morny, and met the picturesque gaudy adventurers of her time and period, and, inevitably, grew before long a little bored with Pierre de Beauvais. He was, to begin with, intolerably proprietory; he loved to exhibit his mistress to his friends as though she were some highly educated poodle trained to jump through a hoop.
"Dance, Lina, dance just for one moment! Piek up your skirts and show them some fantastic step or other!"
"I don't dance in my salon, Pierre—only on the stage. Surely you know that by now?"
"Such airs and graces! You're impossible! Look, Lina, Monsieur Gavarni wants to sketch your foot."



And indeed the artist subsequently produced a drawing of that high narrow instep, beneath which he had written, with a courtly flourish: "Pourquoi chausser une aile?"
Now there were frequent disputes between Lina and De Beauvais.
"Why are you drinking water? Don't be so absurd! You must have some champagne at once."
"How can I? I'm dancing to-morrow—how can I drink wine?"
"Lina, I never see you now. While you're dancing you live the life of a nun, and it would appear that you are always dancing. And in the Jockey Club to-day they said that you were angling for De Morny's scalp!"
"That accusation is so ridiculous that I refuse even to reply to it."
One night, after the ballet, he came into the apartment a little drunk, to find her weeping on a sofa.
"Lina, my precious, what is it? Are you ill?"
"Oh, no, no, no! I'm only tired. And, when one has had to smile all the evening, this is sometimes an admirable way of reposing oneself!"
"I can only think," he said, "that you must be demented."
Their constant bickerings, the society of his cynical and dissipated friends, had between them the effect of irritating her temper and developing a mocking sharpness of tongue that Nordstrom would have teased out of her in less than five minutes. But Nordstrom amused himself, these days, with an imposing lady most suitably named Madame Juno, and Lina soon lost even the faculty of knowing that she was wounding people less sensitive than herself. And when she made fun, as De Beauvais often told her, she was cruel.
A cousin of his, Gaston de Boussac, came to Paris



for a few months, and, presented to the Ondine, feil madly in love with her. Nor was he backword in protesting his devotion, which he proceeded to do even in his cousin's presence.
"Mademoiselle Lina, I assure you that I am not talking idly when I swear to you that I would lay down my life to save you from even a few moments of discomfort!"
"Really, Gaston? You promise me that you are not exaggerating?"
"Mademoiselle, I vow it!"
"But this is really most touching! I promise you that I am much moved! Really, Gaston, you would give me your life?"
"Very willingly, Mademoiselle. Only take me at my word one day."
"Would you give me your head, Gaston?" Lina pursued, fixing him with the slanting darkened eyes that he found so ravishing.
"My head! But most assuredly, if you wanted it."
"Ah-ha! This becomes interesting!" And she slid down on to a footstool at De Boussac's feet, while his cousin Pierre watched her moodily. "Listen, Gaston, I don't want your head, I don't want your life at all, but there is something you can do for me, if you sincerely want to prove your devotion."
"Only teil me quickly!"
"Just this," and she smiled at him like an angel. "You have very beautiful teeth. If you want to become my lover you must first of all prove that you love me very much, and you can best do that, it seems to me, by having one of your back teeth pulled out, and bringing it to me, to-morrow, in a box, to show that you have really suffered, even a little, on my account."
"Now, Lina," De Beauvais protested, "you are to be quiet at once and talk no more nonsense."



But his cousin sprang up, with an appearance of great resolution, to bend gratefully over Lina's hand.
"A demain, Mademoiselle."
"Now, I'll not have Gaston tormented," De Beauvais complained when they were alone, "and you have no business to encourage him with such nonsense. What's the matter with you lately, Lina, you who were once so gentle
and demure?"
"Sometimes I think I can't lead two lives, and yet, if we are being frank, I need the money, so what am I to do?"
"But what do you do with all your money, Madame Harpagon?"
"I am keeping what I've got now for my next ballet, and then there's the child, and the villa at Fontainebleau.
"I would do more for you," said he, if I could, but really, Lina, this apartment, an occasional present of jewelry, and your dress-allowance, are about as much as I can manage at the moment."
"Oh, my dear, as though I were reproaching you!
You're most generous to me."
But she did not teil him that part of the exceedingly handsome dress-allowance was always put aside, for the next ballet." As for Rosing's money, she seldom talked of it. That, after all, was her own business.
The next day, when she had forgotten all about him, Monsieur de Boussac was announced by Marie. Lina was drinking tea, Russian fashion, with Paride, a ballerina from the Opera, and both turned round to stare in astonishment at the eager, excited young man, who bore on the palm of one hand, as though it were some precious jewel, a tiny cardboard box containing his tooth.
"How terrible," Lina teased him, "to think^ that I had actually forgotten all about this colossal sacrifice! You see, Gaston, I am not worth a life, nor a head, not worth



even a tooth . . . and now let's examine the contents of this precious casket."
De Boussac grinned, waiting with every appearance of confidence for her approval. But Lina, gravely peering inside the little box, now looked up with the stricken gaze of one who is immeasurably distressed by the stupidity of her fellow creatures.
"My poor Gaston, what does this mean?"
"But what? What's the matter?"
"Oh, really, you know, Paride, young men nowadays are too stupid to live! Gaston, here, wants to make some sacrifice to show how much he loves me. Very well, I teil him that he may. I send him away vowing to me that he will return to-day with one of his front teeth extracted! And what does he do, I ask you? What does the imbecile do? Look, Paride, he can't even be bothered to listen when I talk to him, and so he brings me a back tooth!"
"But, Mademoiselle Lina, I assure you—you said "
began De Boussac, stuttering.
"Oh, don't trouble to make excuses! Be off with you, now, Gaston, and another time, when a lady is talking to you, at least do her the favor of listening to what she says."
"You have behaved outrageously to my cousin," De Beauvais pronounced pompously, when he called upon her later.
"I know, I know! Don't scold me, Pierre. I can't understand how it is, but lately I only seem to take pleasure in teasing people."
Sometimes, but rarely, she went to Fontainebleau to see her son. Paul was still a small undersized baby, with a precociously grave face and sad dark eyes.
"He doesn't smile much, does he?" Lina said doubtfully to the nurse.
"He's still so young, Madame. Only wait until he is a



little older. But he's quiet, and good as gold. I never knew such a well-behaved baby."
"I don't want him," she said regretfully, "to be too well-behaved."
"Only wait until he grows older," the nurse repeated.
"He doesn't seem to know me," Lina commented.
"He's always shy at first with strangers, Madame."
She returned to Paris tired and dispirited, only to find De Beauvais waiting for her with his watch in his hand.
"Really, Lina, have you forgotten we have a box at the Variétés to-night?"
"Oh, must we go? Can't we have supper quietly instead? I'm tired, after my journey."
De Beauvais flew into a rage.
"II ne manquait que ga! Always when you are not dancing, you are tired! And yet, when you dance, you don't know the meaning of the word! What am I to understand by that?"
But Lina had opened a letter, and was not even listening to him.
"Lina! Will you pay attention to what I am saying?"
She turned then, her face beneath the fur-trimmed bonnet so vivid with ecstasy that it looked as though it were afire.
"Pierre! Listen! A letter from Heinrich telling me of a wonderful offer for a foreign tour of The Ondine! Six months, and all the principal cities of Europe! There! What do you think about that?"
It was easy to see what he thought about it. His heavylidded eyes evaded hers, his lip protruded obstinately.
"What do I think? I'll teil you, ma belle Ondine. I think that the time has come for us to say good-by to each other. I confess that I find you an expensive luxury when I pause to take into account the fact that I never see anything of you. I'm a little tired, Lina, of sharing your



favors with the ballet. One day, when you have had enough of dancing, let me know, and I am quite sure that then I shall discover a delightful mistress."
Now that it had come, this break, she was on the whole relieved to feel that their association was over.
"I'm sorry, Pierre," she said, "but I think you're quite right. I told you once that I couldn't combine two lives. I knew that one day you would agree with me."
And so they parted, neither gladly, nor in grief, as lovers should, but with an indifference so sterile as to make their every gesture of farewell mechanical lest their mutual relief should be apparent.
In a few weeks' time Lina left on her foreign tour.



Chapter 26
The Ondine bewitched Naples and Turin, enchanted Berlin, delighted Vienna, enraptured Brussels and fascinated London. For six months Lina lived entirely for her dancing. She had finished, she declared, with lovers, whose only idea was to waste the time of a busy woman, yet somewhere, hidden away in some secret cranny of her brain, there still lurked the passionate desire to amass money and yet more money—"for the ballet."
"At least," Heinrich commented sardonically, "you have managed to collect some handsome pearls, my dear.
"Good heavens," she said, laughing, "aren't they entirely suitable for a woman of my position?"
Wherever she went she was fêted and flattered by royalty and distinguished persons. Never, she thought, had she been happier, or enjoyed freedom more, in all her life. Before, in America, there had been the perpetual anxiety of Rosing and his failing health; in Paris her liberty had been menaced, first by Nordstrom, and then by De Beauvais. Now, at last, she was free to do as she pleased, and she danced with a grace, an exquisite wildness, an enchanting abandon, that was to win her immortality wherever she went. Her elevation, her ballon, her leap, were more prodigious than ever, her pointes stronger than steel, and technically she was at her most brilliant, her most confident.
Now that she was so far from little Paul, she began to feel that she was neglecting his well-being; on her way to the threater she haunted toy-shops, buying, vaguely and extravagantly, presents that would have amused only a child three or four years older than her son.
180



Her finances continued to absorb her. She was traveling, now, with two other principal dancers, her partner, her maitre de ballet, twenty ballet-girls, Heinrich and Weiss. She discovered, too, that she must include in her company a stage-manager, a coiffeur and three stagehands accustomed to The Ondine's complicated scenery. This little army, trailing all over Europe in the wake of its tireless commander, soon proved itself no less pugnacious than armies have always been, and always will be; the ballet-girls quarreled, slapped one another's faces and burst into periodic floods of tears; the male dancers constantly feil out over such major matters of etiquette as precedence in taking their calls, only to sulk like naughty and affected children; Heinrich seemed to possess the unfortunate faculty of irritating the maitre de ballet, who, when irritated, expressed his irritation by jumping up and down like an infuriated monkey. As for the three permanent stage-hands from France, it is perhaps superfluous to say that they instinctively despised and suspected all others of their kind.
In the midst of all these squabbles, intrigues, potins and disputes, there walked always, aloof but watchful, the presumably remote form of the Ondine. But the Ondine dancing, or the Ondine supping at her hotel, bore no relation whatsoever to the despot who seemed, at rehearsal, to be lurking everywhere—outside the doors of dressing-rooms, in the wings, in the shadows of supposedly empty stage-boxes—wherever, in fact, she was most likely to appear when she was not wanted. And her methods of settling disputes were almost military in their arrogance.
"That Varsovina," the girls said resentfully, "would have been a general had she been born a man."
"Ah, and to think that she is as young as, or younger than, ourselves!"



That fact, indeed, was difficult for Lina's ballet to assimilate. The Ondine, in the early twenties, was already ageless. The lacquer-black hair, the white, eerie face, the burning dark eyes, might well have belonged to a woman ten years older, or even ten years younger, than was actually the case; and her body, so exquisitely supple, was quite simply the body of the Naiad or Sylphide, rather than that of a young woman like themselves. That she had had lovers was known to the members of her ballet, and was secretly a scandal to be marveled at; they saw her either as a martinet, merciless, unyielding, or else dancing, the ghostly Princesse Lointaine of remote and fairy realms.
And Lina, tasting real power for the first time in her life, was thrilled as she had never been thrilled by any of the men who had loved her. To do her justice, she mingled with her sternness a certain judicious kindness. One girl feil ill, and the doctor muttered ominously of lungs. Lina sent her away on a convalescent trip to Italy, paying not only her own expenses, but also those of her aged mother, combined with the doctor's excessive bills.
"Really," said Heinrich, "that was very charming of you, Lina."
"Oh, my dear," she reminded him, laughing, "I am only half Jewish, you know!"
"And I," he said, "have been thinking you the coldest, most heartless woman I ever met in all my life."
"Isn't that rather unkind? Have I behaved as badly as that during the time that we have known each other?"
"You have behaved always to me," Heinrich informed her conscientiously, "with a graciousness that I can never praise enough. But, Lina, you are spiritual, loving only your art, and that, if you will permit me to say so, makes you cruel to the men who love you. Cruel without realizing what it is that you are doing to them. But that is



as it should be; if you were une amoureuse you would not be the dancer of genius that you are to-day."
"What of it?" she argued, with a stubborn, halfunconscious feeling of resentment, "will you teil me what I have missed in life? I've had a husband, lovers—I've got a child. And besides all that I have my dancing. It seems to me I have more than most women, and that I'm to be envied, rather than pitied."
"But, my dear friend, I would never dare to pity you!"
"But if you want to know the truth," she continued, as though the longing to be frank had swept her suddenly and would not be denied, "if you want to know the truth, I will teil you quite sincerely that I realize myself to be a cold woman, with no real desire for anything in life but my work. Love-affairs, somehow, don't seem to touch me at all—I am happier without them. And, that, Heinrich, is a confession I have never made to any one but you."
"When you are dancing, Lina, you make that same confession to every one who sees you!"
"Oh, that's nonsense!" she exclaimed. "Do you really mean to teil me that if I feil passionately in love with any one the quality of my dancing would be in any way affected?"
"I don't think that it would be," Heinrich pronounced after reflection. "I do not think such a thing possible, and therefore my remark was a foolish one. What I really meant, perhaps, was that no woman, no artist, could dance as you dance, with that strange detachment from all that is human, unless she was fundamentally cold. And therein lies your genius, because there have been technical prodigies before you, but never one, Lina, with the spiritual charm that you possess, the charm that enables you to enchant all who watch you."
"And yet," she said, "I know my limitations. I know,



for instance, that I could never dance Elssler's Gipsy. And I'm not talking nonsense, for I've seen Elssler dance."
"Oh, Elssler!" said Heinrich, shrugging his shoulders and spreading out his hands. "Elssler was a sensualist— brutal, provocative. There's no comparison between you two."
"Perhaps," she sighed, with a sudden sense of acute depression, "Elssler had more pleasure in her life than I shall ever have."
"Now, Lina, je vous en supplie! You're enjoying an enormous success and you must make the most of it!"
"Oh, I am," Lina assured him, "but, you know, all the same, one grows tired of being a Naiad all the time, and sometimes, I assure you, the röle of the Ondine becomes unbearably oppressive!"
"Only wait," said Heinrich, "until you return to Paris. You'11 be happy there—supper-parties, champagne, eligible young men, all fighting for your favors."
"But that's just where you're wrong," Lina told him, "I hate the people who come to the rue d'Antin, I hate the supper-parties, and I find the eligible young men intolerable. I'm happy now, touring with my own ballet, happier than I've ever been.- And yet you make me feel that I'm missing something that other dancers, Elssler and Grisi, to say nothing of the Russians, loved and prized, and took as a matter of course. But I don't know what it is, and I feel that I never shall. I only know that I'm happy with my work, and yet, sometimes, when I think that I shall be the Ondine for the rest of my life, I envy Elssler."
"My dear Lina, I perceive that you're after all like any other woman. You are pining to fall in love."
"But you're wrong," she said crossly, "for I've tried that, and it's no good. It only interferes with my work."
"Lina," Heinrich told her impressively, "you have



never, never been in love. As I see you, you're incapable of falling in love. So why worry about these matters?"
"Oh, I'm not worrying," she cried in a sudden rage, "how can I help the way I'm made? I've had everything, as I've told you—success, a husband, lovers, a son—the only objection is that everything has happened to me so quickly that I've experienced all this while I'm too young to have anything to look forward to. Nothing, that is, except being an Ondine, or a Sylphide, for the rest of my life."
"Believe me," he said pompously, "you will be happier if you remain in your world of make-believe."
"But I teil you that I am happy! What an imbecile conversation!"
Yet it seemed that she was attaining a certain reputation as a cocotte. The manager of some important English theaters sounded Heinrich as to the possibilities of a provincial tour in that country. Heinrich replied that Varsovina's terms were a hundred pounds a night.
"You're mistaken as to the object of these negotiations," replied the English manager with a certain cynicism. "I want Varsovina to dance."



Chapter 27
When the tour was over, Lina returned to Paris for a few weeks' rest. She had made money, and although her future plans were uncertain, she was still hoarding money. Furthermore she was independent, and had decided, for the moment at least, to remain so.
She traveled down to Fontainebleau to see Paul. As usual, the sight of this strange, ugly child made her feel curiously guilty, a little sorrowful, and intensely hostile toward Nordstrom, whose image had so completely vanished from her life. But there was something else, now, about Paul that filled her with a definite alarm. She
asked the nurse:
"Why does he always hold his head on one side?"
"One of his shoulders is higher than the other, Madame. I thought that he would grow out of it, but he never has."
"Then you have been extremely careless," she retorted coldly, "not to mention this to me before. I shall send at once for my own doctor."
But her doctor, a fashionable and famous physician, looked at her with sympathy after he had examined the child.
"There's nothing whatever to be done. His back is crooked. The spine must have been weak at birth, and as no one noticed it then, it has grown worse all the time."
"But you must cure him! Surely he is young enough for something to be done?"
"That, Madame, is precisely what he is not. I think that we can prevent the back from becoming any weaker, but the boy will always be slightly deformed, and in my opinion it is better to teil you so quite frankly."
186



"But good heavens!" she cried, "how can such a thing be possible? How can I, a dancer, an athletic woman with muscles of steel, a woman who has never known a day's illness in her life, have given birth to a hunchback child?"
It s not so bad as that, Madame. The boy won't actually be a hunchback—at least we must pray that he won't. The deformity is only a slight one. But if you ask me, I will teil you candidly that it is quite possible just because you are a dancer of abnormal strength that your child was born a weakling. In my experience, I have invariably observed that it is the lazy phlegmatic women who produce the healthiest babies."
And Paul, sucking his thumb, stared at his mother solemnly, patiently, with round dark eyes that seemed too heavy for his waxen face.
Lina returned to Paris, summoned Heinrich and burst into tears.
"My child's deformed. And they can't cure him— he'11 never be the same as other boys! It's so cruel, it's so cruel," she continued, walking up and down the room in a veritable transport of rage, "that Nordstrom and I, in a moment of folly, should have created a being that we didn't want, that never asked to be born, and that will always be, when it grows up, abnormal, an invalid, a poor miserable sickly creature with a crooked back!"
"But my poor Lina, you are not to blame! It's not your fault that the child is deformed."
"It's my fault that the child was born at all." And she murmured, desolate, wiping her eyes: "What's worse than anything is the fact that I can't love Paul. I can't, I can t, and really I have tried . . . but he's so strange, so ugly . . . more like a gnome than a human child . . . yes, that's what it is, he's like something out of Les Elfes', and I don't want even to touch him or be near him'



because he repels me. And yet I'm so sorry for him, so
terribly sorry. ..."
And she continued to weep as though her heart wou d
break. , .
That same evening, as she sat broodmg before her nre, Marie came in to inquire whether Monsieur de Beauvais and two friends might call on her later.
"No," said Lina instantly.
"But, Mademoiselle," coaxed Marie, who said what she pleased to her mistress, "Monsieur lias asked twice before whether he might call, always with friends, bien entendu, and really it would do Mademoiselle good to receive company this evening instead of moping all alone before the fire. And there's enough for supper—plenty of cold chicken, and salad, and then the champagne . . . really, it would be like old times."
"Well," Lina told her, "perhaps even that would be preferable to sitting alone over the fire all night."
"Then we may prepare the supper?"
"Yes."
"And Mademoiselle's new dress?"
"The crinoline? I suppose I might as well wear it. I never have yet. But, all the same, to dress up like that
for Monsieur de Beauvais ..."
"But Mademoiselle may never have another opportunity of wearing the dress!"
"I know. That is exactly what I meant. M put it on. After all, Monsieur Worth took great trouble to make it."
The new dress was of ivory taffeta, with the fashionable crinoline effect, trimmed with ribbons of apple-green. " "Mademoiselle," said Marie, "can hardly wear her
ruby to-night."
"No, I need emeralds, don't I? Well, as I havent any—yet—give me my pearls, and the diamond brooch.



And now, as we have started to make me beautiful, you had better arrange my hair in curls."
"To think," Marie commented, giggling, "that you were once the little gipsy who so much frightened Justine by arriving at the quai des Augustins, wanting to teil us both la bonne aventure!"
"Am I so different?"
"There's a certain difïerence, yes! Then you were thin, ill, half-starved! Now you are beautiful. Yes, really beautiful," Marie concluded with satisfaction, "in this magnificent dress by Monsieur Worth! And they teil me the Empress is dressed by him—she must indeed have good taste!"
And so in radiant white, with swirling tempestuous skirts and the glitter of diamonds at her breast, and her black hair disposed in the long glossy ringlets of the period, Lina went into the salon to await her guests.
A sudden spark of mischief made her start playing the love-song from the opera Mignon exactly as the door-bell rang, and De Beauvais, entering to these familiar strains, found her smiling at him across the room with a mocking, yet half-tender expression.
"My dear Lina! How delightful to see you again! And I hear that abroad you have enjoyed a succes jou!"
"Oh," said she, "I have been very fortunate."
"May I present to you," he said, "Madame Elise Rambert?"
This lady was his present mistress, an exceedingly pretty fair woman in a lilac dress with a splendid diamond necklace.
"Madame," she said enthusiastically, "I can scarcely even now believe that I am to have the honor of meeting the Ondine herself! The times I have applauded your delicious dancing! But Pierre will teil you how much, and how often your great talents have enthralled me!"



"And the other guest?" asked Lina abruptly of De Beauvais.
"Oh, he is combing his hair, the better to create a favorable impression! He's English, and timid, and
thinks you a goddess!"
"And who shall say," Lina taunted, "that he's mistaken,
your English friend?"
"Madame," said Elise Rambert, "we interrupted you when you were playing. Won't you do us the pleasure of continuing?"
"Oh, willingly ... but I can't play—only by ear, and then so badly. But listen, I'll try again, and perhaps this will be a little better . . . this is the pas de l'ombre from The Ondine."
And it was to the eerie, enchanting strains of this music that her third guest entered the room. He arrived, this poor young man, at an unfortunate moment, for she suddenly played a wrong note, and in a fit of rage brought both hands crashing down on to the piano.
"Ah, mats écoutez," and she spun round on the stool in a sudden passion, "is it possible that I play so badly I can't even play my dance, my own dance, my shadow dance, that I've danced a hundred times, in a hundred different cities! Oh, I hate this piano, and I swear 111
sell it to-morrow!"
"But, Madame," said Elise Rambert soothingly, and maddeningly, "surely you are satisüed with what you can do? When one is a genius ought one not to be content?"
But Lina scowled at her like a second Medusa, and De Beauvais interrupted, tactfully, clearing his throat:
"Lina, my dear, before you continue, allow me to present to you Mr. Guy Chevis, the young Englishman I told you of, who is studying French is some obscure and doubtless insanitary quarter of Paris."
"I beg your pardon," said Lina, and held out her hand,



"you arrived at an unfortunate moment, to find me very irritable. Really, for the sake of my friends, I should never try to play the piano."
"As I came in," said he, "I recognized the pas de l'ombre, that I know so well."
"Then all I can say is that you must be very intelligent, Monsieur Chevis. Marie! Marie! Isn't supper ready?"
"In five minutes, Mademoiselle," screamed Marie, with all the force of her lungs, from some adjoining apartment.
De Beauvais said, with the familiarity of an old lover: "I find you very nervous to-night, Lina. But your dress is superb. And this is a happy evening for Guy. He has talked of nothing else but meeting you since first he saw you dance here, months and months ago."
"Really?"
The familiar impulse to tease and mock took hold of her once more, and she turned to face the Englishman with a flash of her old impertinence.
"A pretty boy, isn't he?" De Beauvais continued, winking.
There was a pause, while she studied Guy Chevis intently, until he blushed.
"Isn't he?" pressed De Beauvais.
"Yes," Lina told him dryly.
"You've lost all your wickedness, Lina. I thought you were going to embarrass our Englishman. What's the matter with you?"
"Nothing. But I'm hungry. Shall we go into the dining-room?"
Yet at supper she ate little and drank little, and smoked innumerable cigarettes. The Englishman irritated her, and from time to time she glanced at him almost as though she resented his presence at her supper-party. And yet he was, as De Beauvais had said, a pretty boy. He was young, about twenty-two, with the straight willowy figure



so often to be found in his countrymen and delicate, finely cut features that would have been effeminate but for a powerful, rather hard jaw, combined with the clear calm blue of wide-open, very serene eyes. His hair, which he wore long, was pale gold, with lighter streaks of silver, but his skin was gold, too, as though he had lived much out-of-doors. And his hands were burned dark with the sun.
De Beauvais was drinking hard.
"He's a pretty boy, isn't he, my friend?" he shouted once more across the table.
"Yes," Lina said again, mechanically, but without looking at the Englishman.
"Could you love him, Lina?"
"I don't know, perhaps. Who can say?"
Madame Elise Rambert was also addressing herself, with great energy, to the champagne. She laughed hysterically, pillowed her head on De Beauvais' shoulder, and seemed to emerge, with a curious agility, from the slender confinement of her lilac dress. Lina lighted another cigarette.
Chevis said to her suddenly, across the table: "Will you come into the other room for a moment?"
"Oh, if you like. They won't miss us here."
And she led the way into the salon.



Chapter 28
Will you play the pas de l'ombre once more?" he asked her abruptly, as she crossed the room as though to sit by the fire.
"Have you no ear? Or are you making fun of me?"
"Neither the one nor the other."
"Then don't ask me to play. I can't play, and it only irritates me."
She sat down near the fire, and took a hand screen to shade her face from the blaze.
"Do you know," said Guy Chevis suddenly, "I have often imagined this meeting between us, and it never once occurred to me that you would seem, in your own house, as pale and as strange as you appear when you are dancing."
"Have you seen me dance often?"
Only in one ballet, but in that half a dozen times."
"And you have never tried to meet me before?"
"No," he said.
I am not so difficult to find, you know."
"That's what they told me."
"I suppose you are poor, and couldn't entertain me, and feit embarrassed for that reason?"
"Oh, no," he answered, staring at her with his clear blue eyes, "that wasn't it—I'm not poor. I'm twenty-two, and came into my money a year ago. I am living here now to study French. Soon, in a few months, I shall go home, to England. That wasn't the reason at all."
"Then what? I suppose you are in love alreadv?"
"No." 'y'
"Then I don't understand."
193



'Til teil you," said he, "if you really want to know."
"I do."
"You will probably find me very stupid," said he, "but I don't mind, and I am quite willing to teil you."
"Well?"
"I have worshiped you," he informed her with complete simplicity, "since first I saw you dance. I was obsessed by you—I could think of nothing else. When they told me you were living with De Beauvais, I thought I should go mad."
"But you're a child! What's wrong with you? Why should you think me better than other women?"
He sprang to his feet and came across the room toward her.
"Listen, Lina Varsovina, I don't know what influence you're going to have in my life, or even if we shall ever meet again, but I can only teil you this: that from the first moment I saw you dancing as the Ondine I've never been able to think, even for a moment, of any other woman. You put a spell over me, that first night, and I m
still bewitched."
"You had better," she said, "not teil me such nonsense."
"Why? I suppose you have some rich lover?"
"No. There you're wrong. I've got no lover, at the moment."
"Then why can I not talk to you?" And he was very near to her.
"Because," she said, slowly moving her fire screen, "only two results can come from your sort of confession."
"What results?"
"First let us suppose that I refuse you, which would make you unhappy. Secondly, let us suppose I accept you, which would make you even more unhappy.'
"Why?"
"Because you'd find yourself burdened with an elusive



mistress—a woman who lives for her dancing and for nothing else—a woman to whom love-affairs must always come second."
"They have before, perhaps," he said, "but no one has ever loved you as I do. No one. Don't you realize that?"
"I realize one thing," she told him, "and that is, that you are the strangest young man I have ever met in all my life."
"Could you not love me, if you tried?"
She looked at him for a moment, still fanning herself with the fire screen.
"Couldn't you love me?" he persisted.
She capitulated then, in a sudden crazy fit of impetuosity that astounded her.
"I think that I do love you. I think that I loved you the moment you first came into this room to-night. And now please go away and leave me alone, because no good can come of what we feel for each other."
"Do you think I'll leave you now?"
And she rose to her feet in a whirlwind of white taffeta skirts.
"Why?" he asked, still staring at her.
"Because," she said, "if you must know, I have never loved any one in my life before. Never, never, never. That, I swear, is true. And I have no intention of beginning now."
Chevis asked, apparently as cool as ice: "Why not, for heaven's sake?"
"I suppose," she said, "I'm frightened."
"You'11 never be frightened any more, with me."
"I'm going now," she said, "into my bedroom, to powder my face. The others don't count, at the moment. But will you please go away?"
"I'll come with you first, to say good night."



She hesitated.
"Please let me say good night," he persisted.
"Very well, on condition that you bring that candle with you, and that you stay only for five minutes."
He followed her into the bedroom, which was dark, save for the dying glow of her fire, that cast a dull flicker upon the rich heavy furniture and upon the great bed with its canopy of striped buff-and-blue silk.
"So this," he said, holding the candle above his head, "is the secret bower of the Naiad!"
"Well, what did you expect? A grotto, at the bottom of the sea?"
"Almost, perhaps. Teil me, why have you never loved any one before?"
"Because, if you must know, Mr. Guy Chevis, and you will probaby be discouraged when I do teil you, I am not the sort of woman who falls in love. They teil me that I am cold, calculating, and that I think of nothing but my dancing. I believe all that to be quite true. I haven't the temperament of an amoureuse."
"And yet," he continued, still holding the candle above his head so that his fair hair was turned to gold, "and yet you say that you loved me from the first moment I came into the room to-night. Isn't that true?"
She stared at him for a moment, then averted her eyes and shook her head, swallowing, as if there was a great lump in her throat.
He came a step nearer.
"Isn't that true, Lina? Don't you love me?"
He came nearer still, knelt down, thrust the candle close to her white face.
"Isn't that true, beautiful Lina?"
"Yes," she capitulated once more, "you know it is. Of course it's true. When you first came into the room to-night I feit as though my heart were being dragged



out of me to give to you, and I think that my body must have been on fire, and I said to myself, 'That young man must never come here again because he is dangerous to me, and if he were to beckon I would assuredly follow him.' But I'm braver now, and more sensible, and that is why I'm going to send you away."
"And that is precisely why," he said, "I'm not going. If you love me, then of course I shall stay. If you had not told me, then I suppose I should have gone, but then I know I would have been mad with unhappiness."
Lina continued to stare at him as though she herself were enchanted. Timidly she put one hand on his head and stroked his hair for a moment. Then she told him, with a sudden passion:
"I have never said to any man what I have said to you to-night. I think I never will again. But you must promise never to take advantage of me for having done so. You must never make me unhappy—swear that you won't!"
"I swear it," he said, laughing. His teeth were whiter, more even than rice. Still laughing, he put his arms round her waist and held her very close, so close indeed that the beating of her heart became tempestuous, like the wings of a fluttering bird, very near his ear.
"It's wild, your heart," he whispered.
"I told you it was torn away from me to-night, when you came walking in. It's not my heart any more. I don't want it."
"Will you spend every minute of the day and night with me?"
"I don't know yet. Perhaps. I never met a man like you."
"Kiss me, Lina."
But she slid away from his embrace with a swiftness that reminded him immediately of the treacherous Ondine.



"Lina, what is it? What's the matter?"
"Not with these people here, De Beauvais and that woman. I want you to myself, alone in my house. I don't want those other people."
"Then give me your key, and I'll come back when they've gone."
"You're asking me to do something that I have never yet done for any one before."
"No one," he said, "has ever loved you as I do."
"You'd better come to-morrow night."
"What? Wait twenty-four hours before seeing you again?"
"Oh, you're impossible!"
But her eyes never left him for a moment, and she was like some one in a trance.
"The key, Lina!"
"Do you know," she said suddenly, "I was unhappy, to-night, when you came. I have a baby, a little boy, and he's ill. He is very delicate. He'11 never be strong, like other children."
"I'm very sorry," he said.
"I was upset, to-night, thinking of him."
"He certainly can't have inherited his ill-health from his mother, can he? Was your husband delicate?"
"My husband? What is it to do with him?"
Chevis blushed.
"I beg your pardon."
"I don't want there to be any deceptions between us, ever," she said. "Paul isn't my husband's child. My husband had been dead for months and months when he was born. His father was a lover of mine, somebody of no importance whatsoever in my life."
"I see."
But he continued to look troubled.
"Oh, listen," she said. "When I say that Paul's father



meant nothing to me, I'm speaking the truth. Don't be afraid that I'll ever talk like that of you, my dear."
"It's not that."
"Then please, what is it?"
"It's because I can't understand," he told her with complete sincerity, "how you could ever have fallen in love with some one so ordinary as I am. The people you meet must be very different from me "
"They are," Lina told him dryly.
She went across to him, put one hand on his shoulder, and continued, in a caressing tone of voice:
"I love you. And I've never loved any one before. Isn't that enough? And now I'm going to prove to you that I love you. Wait a minute."
She went across to her dressing-table, searched in her bag, and returned to him with a little gilt key.
"Take this. As I told you, no one ever has before. When the lights in the salon are out, come back. I shall be waiting for you."
Her last view of him, before he left, was of his white beautiful face, his bright hair, illuminated in the twinkling light of a single candle.
She considered him, standing there by the mantelpiece a little stiffly, in all the dignity of her crinoline.
"You are rather like the portrait by Lawrence of the Duc de Reichstadt," she called to him across the room, "but you are more handsome, far more handsome, than he was."
He whispered back, kissing his hand to her:
"Send them away soon. I shall be in torture until the lights are out. I love you!"
"So do I love you."
The door closed softly behind him.
Any one watching in the firelit darkness of the bedroom might then have observed the curious spectacle of



the Ondine dancing for herself, dancing, or rather whirling, in a veritable abandon of delight, spinning round and round until at last she feil exhausted on the bed, to lie there trembling, huddled amid a pile of hooped petticoats, her burning cheek pressed against the coolness of the pillow.
And any one watching this fantastic scene would have been right to conclude that the Naiad, enchantress of so many mortals, was at last herself bewitched.



Chapter 29
The strange inevitable element of Lina's love for Chevis was that it caused her to forget, for the first time in her life, that she was a dancer. Even in those shadowy days when she had toiled as a pantomime child in Kennington she had gloried in her profession; ever since the time of her début she had never, like any other royalty, been able to forget for one moment that she was a prima ballerina assoluta. But now, in the first rhapsodies of this wild obsession for the Englishman, the world of the ballet seemed almost to waver, until it receded somewhere very remote, somewhere so far away from her that she thought of it no more.
And chance favored her, for she had returned so recently from her foreign tour that Heinrich had as yet made no plans for her future. Perhaps because she was afraid of Heinrich she chose, after three days, to take Chevis down to the villa at Fontainebleau.
"How long," he asked her, "am I to stay with you?"
And she answered feverishly, putting her hand over his mouth so that he should not protest: "For ever and for ever and for ever!"
"And you'11 not grow tired of me, Lina?"
"That's a wicked thing to say!"
"My darling, I know it is! Very well, then, my sweet, I'll stay with you for ever and for ever and for ever!"
"And not go back to England?" she demanded.
"Ah, don't let's talk of that! Don't you remember the fairy-books, Lina? 'They lived happily for ever after?' We must be like that. Like the fairy-books. And we must really never think of solemn things."
201



"Sometimes, you know," she told him, "I shall have to dance for a little while, so that we will have enough
money." . }J
"I have money for both of us, Lina.
"I don't want ever to touch your money," she said with sudden passion, "and yet I suppose that in the end I shall. But I don't want to, and I'll not, while I have enough for
myself." . A ,
"Lina, Lina, I thought we were not going to talk ol
solemn things?"
"We never will, again."
Her little villa, on the edge of the forest, seemed to Chevis like an enchanted cottage from the pages o Perrault, a fairy domain of which Lina herself was the princess, and Paul the attendant gnome.
"He's very quiet, and looks so old. Is he always the
same, Lina?" .
"Yes, always. He's not like a child, is he.
"No," Chevis said uncomfortably.
He wished that he could explain his thoughts. Although he pitied Paul intensely, it shocked him to thmk that his exquisite Lina could have given birth to such a changeling.
But he soon forgot Paul, for during those first weeks of sun and spring at Fontainebleau he lived in such ecstasy that he had room neither in his mind nor in his heart for anything but Lina. Her image was with him day and night, waking and sleeping, so that he could not bear to let her out of his sight even for a moment. If he was parted from her for five minutes he sought her again the more eagerly, turning to her ardent pallor as though it were the sun, and he a creature in need of warmth. He was frantically jealous of her past, but determined to bite his tongue out rather than grieve her by telling her ol the rage he feit for the men who had once possessed her. He experienced almost immediately the reckless gener-



osity common to those who are passionately in love, and would have decked her in jewels from top to toe had she consented, but she would not consent.
"Besides, my dear, you must save your money. Look at me—I've always saved money, and I assure you it accounts for much of my success."
"Let me at least buy you a carriage and horses. You need them, here in the country."
"Very well, you can do that if you like, since you will use them as much as I do. But I never met such a strange young man. You drop from the skies into my drawingroom, conquer me in one second, and seem to have your pockets stuffed with gold into the bargain! Teil me, why haven't women got hold of you before?"
"Because, as you very well know, I thought only of the Ondine."
"What were your family about to send you all alone to Paris, so young and so rich?"
"My uncle and aunt, who brought me up, thought that it would be good for me, after I came down from Oxford, to live for a few months in Paris to study French."
"And if they knew of me?"
He laughed. "I told them I left Paris for Fontainebleau because I had discovered an admirable teacher in this part of the world."
"I adore you for saying that."
There was a gaiety, an innocence, about the young Englishman that Lina had never before encountered in any man. In some ways he was extraordinarily youthful for his age; he was without guile, and would, she knew, have been easy to deceive, a trait in his character that made a curious appeal to something protective in her own. Like most Englishmen of his age and class, he was completely honest, sweet-tempered, inexperienced and temperamental.



One day, casually, when they had been driving in the forest, he told her that he was the nephew and heir of that puissant English nobleman, the Marquis of Rochdale.
"Do you mean," she said, "that you will be Lord
Rochdale one day?"
"Yes. My uncle has no children, and has always brought me up as though I were his own son."
"Is he old?"
"He's not young. He's about sixty."
"Oh, why, why," she asked, "did you have to teil me this?"
"What has it got to do with us?"
"Everything," Lina informed him, with a sense of bitter experience, "when I first loved you I had no idea that you were some one chic, some one who was important in English society. I never thought about you at all. I suppose I took you for granted. Anyhow, I thought of you as my lover, and that was the beginning and the end
of the matter."
"But, Lina, my sweet, I only ask you to continue
thinking of me in the same way!"
"Very well."
But she said suddenly, a few moments later:
"It's not quite the same, Guy. Before, I had played with the ridiculous idea that you would stay with me for ever. Now I know that one day they'11 take you away from me. And that day my heart will break!"
"Lina! I thought we were never going to talk of
serious things?"
"I know we promised not to. But somehow they can't be avoided, those serious things, for very long."
"Then I am going to be extremely serious."
And he took her in his arms, smiling, gay, self-confident. "Lina, will you make me very happy?"



"You know that I will."
"Then will you promise to marry me?"
There was a long silence. He feit her body stiffen in his arms.
"Lina! Did you hear what I said?"
"Oh, yes, I heard. But I agree with you: we had better not talk of serious things."
"Lina! I'm waiting for your answer."
"No one but my strange young man," she told him, trying to laugh, "would have asked me such an insane question in the first place."
"Will you marry me, Lina?"
"No, Guy! And don't be absurd, because it hurts me."
"You shall marry me!" he told her in a sudden fury. "Do you hear? You've got to. We've got to marry. We can't live without each other. We never could. Alone, we're incomplete; together we are worth something, you and I."
"Yes," she said, "I would make a fascinating Marchioness, wouldn't I? A woman who is not only famous as a dancer, but who is also notorious as a cocotte. A woman with an illegitimate child, a dead husband, several lovers and a circus upbringing! How enchanted your family would be when they heard the news of our engagement."
He retorted stubbornly: "I can't help all that. Possibly it would have been more popular had I fallen in love with some young girl chosen for me by my family. But as I haven't, it can't be helped. Without you, I shall never be worth anything at all. Never, never, never. I think, Lina, that I have been waiting for you all my life. I know that but for you I should never even have been properly alive."
"You are my dear love, and nothing else matters. But you must never talk of marrying me again. Promise me that, please!"



'Til not promise anything of the sort."
"But you must, you must!"
She had become extraordinarily agitated.
"Then," said he, "if I can't marry you, I assure you
I shall never marry any one!"
"Oh, listen," she cried. "You can stay with me as long as you like—for years and years and years. I'll always keep you, because I worship you, and I know that you worship me. But you're such a child, my darling you see, people like us can't marry, and any one but you would have understood that.
"We love each other, isn't that enough?"
"Oh, no, Guy, indeed it isn't."
"Lina, you're crying?"
"I dare say. I can't help it. I love you so much that
sometimes it frightens me."
At this moment Marie came into the room with a letter.
Lina opened it.
"Well," he wanted to know, after she had read it twice,
"what is the matter?"
"It's from Heinrich, my manager. He has had an otter
for a Russian engagement."
"And what are you going to say?"
"This!" ,
She tore the letter into fragments before his eyes and
then flung her arms about his neck.
"No, no, no, and no! lam going to stay here, with you. What do I care about a Russian engagement?"
He frowned, a little disconcerted by her obvious excitement. "Is it so very important, Lina?"
"A little important! Engagements to dance before the Tsar at the most famous theaters of St. Petersburg and Moscow! But at the moment, frankly, I don't care if I never dance again. Really, I don't! I only care about you."



"Then will you marry me, Lina?"
"Never! I love you too much for that. But we'11 stay together, won't we, for years and years and years?"
He came across to her, put his arms around her, kissed her mouth and buried his face in the darkness of her hair.
Why, the curious have often wanted to know, did Varsovina never dance in Russia? The answer is that on an April evening, for the sake of love, she refused an engagement that would have made her fortune. In St. Petersburg, knowing nothing of these matters, they never forgave her. She was not invited there again.



Chapter 30
Heinrich was in a rage. As usual he confided his grievances to his old friend and comrade, Weiss.
"That woman, Varsovina! I shall leave her! I shall wash my hands of her! Really, she has become impossible!"
"Why," Weiss wanted to know, "did she refuse the famous Russian engagement? Another injured knee?"
"Varsovina is in love! I teil you she is in love!"
"That," Weiss pronounced judicially, "I refuse absolutely, yes, absolutely, to believe!"
"But I teil you, espèce d'imbecile," Heinrich shouted, for he was really much annoyed by the stupidity of his friend, "I teil you, I who should know, that the woman is in love! Madly, desperately, in love! And with some rich puppy of an Englishman with whom she is living down at Fontainebleau."
"He must indeed be rich," was Weiss' comment.
"Must I repeat to you again that Varsovina is in love? When have rich lovers ever before interfered with her dancing? Consider Nordstrom, consider De Beauvais. She knew how to wind them round her little finger! Whenever there was a ballet to be rehearsed, they were dismissed, immediately, given their congé, until all was over. But this is different, entirely different, for I assure you that Varsovina has jorgotten that she is a dancer. And that," Heinrich continued with profound emotion, "is the end of everything."
"Then what is to become of us?" Weiss wanted to know.
"Who can say? I have heard of a new ballet, Le Papilion, and wish to discuss it with her, but she refuses
208



to look at it. She no longer even answers my letters. I went down to Fontainebleau, but I never saw her, for Marie told me that Monsieur and Madame had gone for the day to Barbizon! Monsieur and Madame! Je vous demande! And I, poor fooi that I am, once in Berlin taunted her with being incapable of falling in love!"
"I recollect," said Weiss, nodding his head sagaciously, "and at the time I thought your remarks highly imprudent."
"Am I a magician, to have prophesied the onslaught of this all-conquering Englishman?"
Meanwhile the lovers themselves, incarcerated down at Fontainebleau, continued to think only of each other. It was as though they were shut up together in some little secret world into which none but themselves might enter. And in that world were not only passion and pleasure hitherto undreamed of, but other joys besides—tenderness, gaiety, peace, understanding, and all the rare sweetness of companionship. When they were not making love to each other they were able to talk, happily enough, of a hundred different things.
He told her of his home, an old gray house in Wiltshire, with a rose garden, an English park and a trout stream. He talked to her naïvely of his horses, of his spaniels, of his guns and of his new phaeton. He told her, chuckling, how much he enjoyed the early summer mornings at Chevis.
"I love swimming, Lina, and I wake up early when I'm living down there. So I creep out, before any one is up, to bathe in the lake, and you have no idea how beautiful the park looks at dawn. Everything is fresh, and smells sweet, and the long grass is thick with dew, and quite suddenly you come upon little new mushrooms, like white buttons, buried in the turf. They smell good, too. And there are pike in the lake, with long teeth, and water-lilies,



white ones and pink ones too, with long sterns, like snakes, and very often, in the reeds, you'11 find a moorhen's nest with speckled eggs."
"And that's your home!"
"It will be, one day. And, Lina, there are pigeons living in a loft above the stable clock, that make the sleepiest, most peaceful noise you ever heard, and then there s the kitchen-garden, where in the summer you can eat peaches all warm with the sun, and greengages when they've become rather yellow, and taste delicious, and then there s my aunt's favorite border, with mignonette in it, and lavender, and stocks, and cherry pie, and then there's the island in the lake, with a little temple in the middle of it, among the trees, and the swan's nest there each spring, and—oh, Lina, swear that you'11 come to my home one
day J"
"Oh, hush, my darling, you know that's forbidden!"
"But, Lina "
"No! Really, Guy, I mean no."
And she put her hand over his mouth.
But she also talked to him sometimes, she who was so reticent, and told him of Kennington, and of Nurdo, and the circus, and of her marriage to Rosing and of
their American tour.
"I treated my husband with a selfishness of which only a child could be capable. And yet I was not really a child. I was neither one thing nor the other. But, now, since I have learned for myself what love is like, I sick, when I think of how often I must have hurt him."
And of Nurdo. ;
"He was like many jugglers—a madman. But I didn t know that. Imagine—I tried to fall in love with him! I was fifteen at the time, and very conscientious. And then he threw me out of the wagon and flung all my clothes af ter me, and I slept in the stables, with the horsesl And



the next day I went to Rosing, and he was shocked by my wild ways, and thought me a gipsy!"
"And so you are, my darling Lina," he declared, kissing her, "you ran barefoot in the garden yesterday, and now you have no bonnet, and your hair's in elflocks, and your hands are almost sunburned!"
Sometimes, as the weather grew warmer, they wandered at night in the forest, where the crystalline purity of the moonlight cast an ethereal light upon the stems and boles of hoary ancient trees.
"What a scene for a ballet, Guy!"
"Yes, but you shan't dance, not if I know it."
"Why not?"
"You frighten me in this light, and in this setting. You're no better than a spirit—I'm afraid that you'11 vanish, and leave me for ever."
"How could I leave you? There's no spell on earth could make me do that!"
"All the same, I can't help remembering the poor fisherman in The Ondine."
"Oh, Guy!" and she was suddenly intensely serious; "you mustn't say things like that—really you mustn't."
"Why not? My beloved, my dove, I was only joking!"
"Then hold me close!"
He laughed. "I was wrong, Lina. No spirit could seem as warm as you are now, or as sweet, or as soft. You're no ghost; you're only my dear love, and I worship you with my body and with my soul."
"Listen," she whispered suddenly, clinging closer to him, "if we died to-night, both of us, or even one of us, we would all the same have a great deal to be grateful for, wouldn't we? Do you suppose any two people have ever been so happy before?"
"I've already forbidden you," he said, "to talk of such solemn things."



212
"I never will again, but the moonlight makes everything unreal to-night. It makes me solemn, in spite of myself, although I am so wildly happy . . . and, feeling solemn, I am a little frightened about the future, our
future."
"Now, Lina, why?"
"Because," she said, "it would be so terrible to have been given all this only to have it taken away. I think it would kill me. And yet that sounds ungrateful, because, as I have just said, if one of us died to-night, the other would always have these lovely secret memories, that nothing, or nobody, could ever take from either one o us."
"Lina, if you are going to talk like that, I shall have to kiss you so many times that you won't be able to speak any more. Why must you talk of dying?
"Perhaps," she said, "I really meant parting. lts
the same, to me."
"They say," he reminded her, "that parting means
dying a little bit." .
"That's worse. Far worse. I would rather die out-
right, and be finished with it." . . ,
"But, Lina, we are not going to part! You re wicked to-night, and I think the moon has bewitched you. I
shall take you home." _
"But, Guy, how can we stay like this for the rest ot our lives? You must be brave enough to think of that. One day it will have to end, and then what are we going
to do?" . u .
"Haven't I asked you," he reminded her, quite a
hundred times to marry me?"
"Yes, I know you have, and I have explained to you
more than a hundred times why that's impossible.
"But at least, Lina, you could come back with me to England, and then we need never be separated."



"Yes," she said, "as a kept lady, hidden away in a discreet little house somewhere near St. John's Wood. You would visit me once a week, and keep your brougham waiting outside my door. And I would grow fat, and forget that I had ever been a dancer. Sooner or later, in a few years, you would find that I was more tedious even than your wife. And then you would pension me off, and all this—all this beauty and passion and glamour, would be dead, as though it had never existed. I couldn't endure that. Really, really, I couldn't."
"But, we're not going to part! Why, to-night, have you got this extraordinary obsession?"
"It's not only to-night," she said. "I have been thinking of it for a long time. How can you stay with me for ever? One day your uncle will die, and then you'11 be a grand gentleman, who will have to marry a grand wife, and then we shall have to go our separate ways. You know that as well as I do."
"If I thought as you do," he said, "I'd scarcely want to go on living. But I don't, thank heaven. How can two people meet as we did, by chance, and love each other in the way we do, if they weren't meant by fate to stay together all the days of their life? Of course we shall never part; it would have been too cruel, otherwise, ever to have met. Do you believe in God, Lina?"
"Well," she said, "I scarcely know. I suppose that I do; for I burn a candle every night beneath my ikon."
"1 do," he said defiantly, "and I know that we were intended for each other, you and I, ever since first we were born. We were put into the world simply to find each other. Whether we marry or not, that doesn't matter. What does matter is the fact that without each other we are incomplete, and that God would never have created us in the beginning, if we were not intended to be together as long as we live."



"Oh, very well. Will you take me home, now?" she asked.
"Of course. You're not cold, are you? Put on your shawl."
"Help me, then. And you will be glad to hear," she said, "that I have finished talking of serious things."
'Tm glad indeed! Now at last, we shall begin to be happy!"
She walked home that night with her "strange young man" in moonlight so radiant that even the clouds of dancing vivid fireflies seemed dim, in contrast to so much glamour.



Chapter 31
Lina was dressing, half-naked in a froth of lace petticoats, when, in response to imperious calls, Marie hastened into the bedroom, hiding a letter in her apron.
"Where have you been? How can I dress myself when you have not even laced my stays?"
"Mademoiselle "
"And don't say Mademoiselle. How many times must I teil you that now I like to be called Madame?"
"Madame, then. If Madame would only stay still a moment . . . there. I have here a letter from Monsieur Heinrich."
"Heinrich? I don't want to open it."
"But it is not for Mademoi—for Madame. It is for me. It was written to me."
"Give me my powder puff. Monsieur is waiting all this time. Why should Heinrich write to you?"
"But, Madame, he is distraught. He is at his wits' end! He begs only for ten minutes' interview with Madame. That, he says, will suffice. He "
"I don't want to hear anything about it. Why can't he leave me alone? Give me the cashmere shawl. Good heavens, am I unable to have even a few weeks' holiday without Heinrich pursuing me from morning till night?"
"But Madame has been down here for two months, now "
"If I stay two years, it's entirely my own affair. Teil him to leave me in peace, and you leave me in peace, too, Marie. All this time, while you are delaying me, Monsieur is waiting down in the garden, and he'11 scold me for taking so long to dress."
215



216
And indeed the voice of Chevis could be heard shouting her name in the distance.
She ran across to the window and leaned out, laughing, alight.
'Tm coming! I'm coming! Look, I'm dressed, now. And I'm wearing the shawl you gave me. Do you like it?"
He called back, shading his eyes with his hand: "I adore it, and you too. But will you kindly come downstairs at once?"
"At once! I promise." She kissed her hand to him.
"And Monsieur Heinrich, Madame?" Marie pursued stolidly as her mistress prepared to escape from the room.
"Que le diable l'emporte! Write and say that I'm too busy to see him yet."
"But, Madame, I read only very slowly, and I am quite unable to write at all."
"Then do as I do—tear his letter into little bits."
"Madame :s quite impossible!"
But Lina was no longer in the room.
It had become a favorite amusement for Chevis to take her out in a boat to the middle of a lake near the villa; here they would lie for hours on cushions, basking in the sun, drowsy, silent, and sometimes she made him read aloud to her while she lay motionless, chin propped on her hand, staring down into the black mirror of the lake, where strange weeds streamed, and fish glided in and out of the shadows, and showers of silver^ bubbles came glittering up to the surface from time to time.
"Not tired of the country, Lina?"
"Tired of it? I love it more every day."
"And to-night we'11 stalk the nightingale, won't we?"
"Yes. Did I teil you, Paul smiled at me to-day. I think he's beginning to like me. Do you really believe that we shall hear the nightingale?"



"If we're lucky we shall. And we have been lucky, so far, my sweet, since first we knew each other. Have you never heard a nightingale before?"
"Never."
"In my home, at this time of the year, the woods are thick with them."
"You said that," she complained, "a little as though you wished yourself back there."
He laughed, and caught her hand.
"If you really meant that, I should think you exceedingly wicked. But as you don't mean it, I know you only want me to pay you more compliments. And I shan't, for it's late, the sun's going down and I must take you home."
"Home already? So soon?"
"Yes. It gets cold, on this lake, when the sun goes off it."
"Another day gone," Lina commented. "And so quickly. In one flash. Since I knew you, the days have flown faster than seconds. A hundred years would only seem like one, here."
He laughed, puiling at his oars.
"It's you, now, who are paying me compliments. My sweetheart, I shall be glad to get home. I'm hungry."
"You always are. Do all Englishmen eat as much as you?"
"They eat much more, I assure you. I'm supposed to have a small appetite at home. Yes, really, Lina, so don't look at me like that. And now be careful getting out— give me your hand, darling."
When they reached the villa Marie, wearing a lugubrious expression, came to meet them with some letters.
"Again that poor Monsieur Heinrich! And a letter for Monsieur, with an English stamp."
"We're hungry," said Lina. "We want some rolls and



chocolate. Or—wait a minute—would you rather have coffee or chocolate, Guy?"
"Coffee for me."
"Coffee, then. And hurry, Marie."
She went across to the window and stood gazing out at her little garden, bright with flowers, over which, paler, more fragrant, than her own lavender, the summer dusk was flowing.
"There's a bat!" she said. "We shall soon have to light the lamps. Can you see to read your letter? "Lina!"
Something violent in his voice made her turn sharply,
every nerve on edge.
"What is it? What's the matter? Guy, Guy, what s
the matter?"
He jumped up, crumpling the letter in his hand. It was now too dark to see his face with any clearness, but she was afraid, and ran to him, groping for his hand. _ "Have you had bad news, Guy? Teil me, darling,
please teil me!"
"Oh, it's nothing," he said in rather a stramed voice,
"nothing to worry about for the moment, anyhow, my dear. Only . . . it's that my uncle's ill, with bronchitis not dangerously ill, please don't think that, but . . . well, this letter's from my aunt, who always must make a tremendous to-do about everything."
"I see," Lina said. Her tone was thoughtful.
"Lina."
"What is it?"
"I know this is going to upset you, but I really thmk I shall have to go back to England for a short time. You see, my aunt, as I have told you, worries herself to death whenever my uncle has got anything at all the matter with him, and I know that she would like to feel that I was on my way home. But, my sweet, you must be brave,



because you know this is not the parting we've talked of, but only a very temporary affair indeed. Let us say a fortnight. Directly he is better I'll come flying back to you. You do understand?"
She patted his hand, still standing close beside him in the dusky room.
He put his arms round her. "Speak to me, Lina! Teil me that you understand?"
"I do, I do," she whispered, "only things like this are so frightening. It takes a little time to get used to them. When you told me, it was like a thunderbolt. We were so happy, laughing all the time about nothing at all. We've had such a perfect day. And then this letter . . . but I know you must return. Shall you go early in the morning?"
"My darling, I must go to-night. By to-morrow I must leave Paris."
"Oh, not to-night! Not now! Surely, surely, you needn't do that?"
"I would feel guilty," he said, "if I postponed going until to-morrow. And—and—wel!, it would make it even more difficult for me if I stayed. God knows, it's bad enough now."
"Very well. I'll ring for Marie."
"Lina! Come here a moment! Teil me you are not angry."
"Angry! With you, my dear? I could no more be angry with you than I could be unfaithful to you. Only, if you've got to go, we must get Marie to pack your clothes, and we must order Jean and the horses."
She pulled the bell.
"Lina, once again, will you marry me when I come back to you?"
"You know that's impossible! In any case, don't let's talk about it now, when we have so little time."



Here Marie came in with the lamps.
"Lina!" he cried, "you're paler than death! I know you don't believe I'm coming back."
"I do! I do! But please wait a minute, because there's so much to do. . . . Marie, Monsieur has to go away to-night—for a little time. His uncle is ill. Will you go up-stairs now and pack his clothes, and please order Jean and the horses in—half an hour."
"To-night? Monsieur is leaving to-night? Pas possible!"
"Hurry! Don't stop to argue! You have only half an hour."
Marie vanished without another word.
"I shall drive on to the town," he told her, "and get a calèche, with a change of horses along the road. I should be in Paris early to-morrow. And then a train will take me to Calais. From Calais I'll write to you, and from Dover, and from London, and from Chevis. I'll write to you every day, and you'11 know that my letters will be covered thick with kisses."
She went across to the window and sank down on the low chair where she rested often on summer afternoons.
"Guy, will you do something to please me?"
"Anything in the world, as you know."
"Then put out the lights, so that we can stay here quietly, in the twilight, until you must go."
He obeyed.
"And now come here to me," she said.
He knelt down on the floor, his fair head resting on her lap, his arms locked about her body.
"Lina, my dove, my sweet, my dear beloved, won't you . . . couldn't you . . . can't you join me in England soon?"
"You know that's impossible," she whispered, her face hidden in his hair.



221
"But why?"
"Because in England you are somebody who must be correct, somebody important. Here it doesn't matter. Here you are nothing but my dear love."
"You don't know how soon I shall come back to you. I shall count the hours. I think I shall keep a calendar, crossing off the days, as I did when I was a little boy at school."
"How much I wish I had known that little boy!"
"Lina, listen, I want you to promise me something."
"What is it, first?"
"It's this. If—if anything terrible—I can't bring myself to say it, but you know what I mean—should happen, so that I couldn't come back, would you promise to come to me in London?"
"I dare say," she murmured, "but we mustn't think of things like that."
"But, Lina, you said yourself that we could never be separated!"
"I didn't say quite that. I said that if we ever were separated, we would have happier memories than most people. And so we would."
He cried, in a sudden agony: "Don't you dare to talk like that, in that way, as though everything were finished between us! You mustn't—you shan't—it's cruel, and it's wicked, and I forbid it!"
"Guy!"
She raised his head, pulled his face down toward her, and kissed him on the mouth.
' My darling," she told him, "what has been between us can never be finished. Never, never, never."
"Then that means you'11 never leave me, Lina?"
"I know," she said, "that something of me will be with you always, whatever happens to you, wherever you go. I have already told you, my darling, that nothing could



ever kill what has been between us. Nor can anything spoil it. Love is a strange thing, and I don't pretend to understand it at all; I don't understand, for instance, why two people made for each other, as we are, should not have been allowed to meet before. That seems to me cruel. And yet, in this short time, we have experienced every emotion possible to two people in love—there's nothing beautiful, nothing intimate, nothing comical, nothing gay and nothing sad, that we have not known during the two months that we have been together. If we had been married and domestic for twenty years, we could not say more—perhaps we could not say as much. So let's remember that to-night, when we are going to be separated for the first time."
"Oh, Lina, Lina," he cried, clinging to her, kissing her lips, her eyes, her hair, her throat, "I can bear anything, I think, but the way you insist on speaking of us— in the past tense, as though we were both of us already dead and forgotten! Do you realize that's what you are doing? You're putting everything behind you, as though our love were finished, and that you mustn't do, or I think we shall both go mad. After all, what's a fortnight? Nothing; absolutely nothing at all. . . . And yet we're talking, both of us, as though it were for all eternity, as though this parting were the fearful one we talked of in the forest, a parting for good and all! As though we were never going to see each other again. As though all our joy were finished and done with, when so much of it is still to come."
"I can't help it," she cried, "when it's a question of losing you, even for a few days, I can't be brave. You must be brave for both of us."
"Will you write to me, by beloved?"
"You know I will. But that's something I've never learned—to write letters. You'11 find mine very cold and



very stiff, and no doubt the spelling will be atrocious. But you'11 understand, because you always understand everything."
"My darling," he said, "when first I met you, I thought of you always as the Ondine, remote, and fairy-like, and rather treacherous . . . then, when I became your lover, I knew the real Lina, some one warm-hearted and passionate, and gay, and understanding . . . that's how I'll think of you, during the time that we are parted—as a mistress and as a comrade, with all the finest qualities of both. And I shall dread waking up in the morning, because you won't be by my side. And I shall send you kisses, across the sea. And, Lina "
"Here's Marie."
"As usual, she's falling over everything."
"Mais en fin," Marie protested, "it's not my fault, if you will insist on sitting in the dark. And Jean is here, and the luggage is ready."
She lighted the lamps. When she discovered them, nestled together in one chair, pale, defenseless, weeping, she was for a moment disconcerted.
Ah, mais voyons! Monsieur is only going away for a short time, isn't he?"
"Yes," Guy said.
Yet they remained together, clasped like children in each other's arms, so white, so terrified and so woebegone that even Marie's placid Flemish heart was touched.
"Oh, I can't go!" he cried in despair. "It's asking too much. I can't, I can't!"
"Oh, Marie," Lina said, "do you hear what he says. He says that he can't go, and why should he? I can't bear to part with him, you know that I can't 1 Surely, surely he needn't go?"
"Isn't it true that Monsieur le Marquis is ill?" Marie demanded.



224
"Yes," they both said, and instinctively drew apart.
"Then," Marie pronounced, "it would be heartless and unnatural for Monsieur to stay. And Madame knows that, too. After all, in these days, what is a trip across
the Channel?"
"She's right, Lina. Think how soon I shall come back!
"But I can't bear it here without you! Really I can't."
"Don't you think, Marie," he inquired, "that she had better go to Paris while I am away?"
«Bien sur, Monsieur," said Marie, thinking,^ as she spoke, of that poor Monsieur Heinrich and of his many difficulties.
"You will look after her, Marie?"
"But naturally, Monsieur. Haven't I always looked after her, since first I have known her?"
"My darling, my beloved, I must go!"
"Oh, very well."
She sprang up from the chair, and they stood facing each other, awkward, weeping, trying to smile.
"Will you go to bed early to-night, Lina?"
"I'll try to. I promise I'll try to."
"And you'11 sleep?"
"I expect so. I'm very tired."
"You'11 get a letter very soon, you know."
"I'll live for that."
"Then kiss me."
"You're crying, Guy."
"So are you, Lina. How stupid we are! To distress ourselves in this way just for a fortnight!
"We can't help it, can we? After all, we have never been parted bef ore! My darling, I love you with all my heart and with all my soul!" ^
"Lina! Won't you smile just once before I go?"
"I can't, any more than you can. Wait, only wait, until you come back. I'll smile then, I promise you."



"And to think that to-morrow," he said, "we were driving out to watch the Emperor hunting, with all his court!"
"When you come back, Guy. The Emperor won't run away."
"It's I," he said, "who am running away."
"That's nonsense. Kiss me just once more, Guy, and then go quickly, before I see you leave."
"My own darling, my dove, I worship and adore you. There! I won't say good-by—I'll only say good night. God bless you!"
She was alone for a long time, for a whole eternity.
"Marie, Marie!"
"Madame?"
"He's gone, hasn't he?"
"Yes, Madame. You can still hear the horses' hooves."
"I don't want to hear them. Shut the window."
She stood where he had left her, white and sick and frozen, like a woman of wax.
"Madame! Here's the coffee you ordered."
"I don't want any coffee."
"All the same, Madame will be kind enough to drink it."
"Leave me alone, can't you?"
"Certainly, Madame, when Madame has finished her coffee."
"He was sorry to go, wasn't he, Marie?"
Marie said simply: "Monsieur was broken-hearted."
"Oh, I don't want this coffee, Marie, I don't want it."
"All the same, Madame must drink it."
"Oh, very well... it's good, only, don't you understand, I am not thirsty."
"Voyons, Madame! Are we to stay here all night!"
"I am going to. You had better go to bed."
"Not before undressing Madame."
"I teil you I'm not sleepy. Don't you understand, I want to be left alone?"



LL O
"I can not go to bed without undressing Madame. "Oh, very well. But I shan't sleep. ^
Marie said accusingly: "You promised Monsieur. Lina was too tired to make any further protests. She allowed herself to be undressed like a child.
"I shall leave my door open," Marie informed her, "if Madame wants anything in the night, she has only
to call." . , , , . T
"What's the use? You can't give me back what 1 want.
Nobody can do that. That's gone for ever."
"In a fortnight Monsieur will be home once more.
Lina looked at her scornfully.
"Do you really think so? Well, I know better than that—I know that he has gone for ever."
"Will Madame do me the favor of going to bed?
Lina began to cry.
"He's gone for ever. He'11 never come back. Never, never. I know it, I teil you. I knew from the first. Things as beautiful as that can't last they never o.
But I love him so, I love him so!"
"Monsieur would be most indignant if he could but
see how Madame is upsetting herself!"
But Lina continued to sob.
"Two months, in all my life! That s all I ve had of love! And I want him so! I want him so! Why should I have to love some one who can never marry me. And to-morrow we were going to watch the Emperor hunting! Oh I hate Fontainebleau—I'll never come back here again, never, never! I'll send Paul somewhere else, and sell the house! I'll go to Paris to-morrow! If I stayed
here, I should go mad!"
"If Madame refuses to compose herself, I shall nav
to send for the doctor," Marie warned.
"Doctors can't cure broken hearts. And if he never comes back my heart will assuredly be broken. And I



know he never will come back! Of course he won't! It was always meant for him to leave me. But I want him, I want him, I want him!"
Toward dawn she feil asleep, exhausted. But in her sleep she murmured Guy's name many times. And it was not until daylight that Marie left her.



C hapt er 32
Heinrich once more unfolded the letter and read it aloud sardonically.
"So Varsovina will be pleased to receive me this afternoon, at the rue d'Antin. Imagine, mon cher Weiss, the honor that she does me! It might be a royal command.
"At last," said Weiss, with satisfaction, "after so long we may achieve something."
Heinrich went round to the rue d'Antin at about four o'clock in the afternoon. He was admitted by Marie, who exhibited every demonstration of pleasure at his reappearance in her world. He was then shown into the salon,
which was empty.
"Madame has been resting," Marie explained, "I will let her know that Monsieur is here. She has not been sleeping well, and sometimes I manage to persuade her to lie down in the afternoons."
"Indeed!"
He sat down in an armchair, peeled off his gloves, which were of lavender suède, and folded them carefully upon his knee.
"Indeed! And the Englishman?"
"What Englishman? There is no Englishman here. Madame is quite alone. Excuse me, Monsieur; I will let her know that Monsieur has arrived."
Alone in the salon, Heinrich soon began to exercise his powers of observation. No pictures. No letters, of course. They would be locked away in some casket in her bedroom. But what was that newspaper folded so neatly upon her writing-table? A foreign paper, surely, probably of English origin. He tiptoed across the room.
228



He was correct in his surmise, for he found himself peering at the obituary column of the Times, wherein was recorded at some length an account of the recent death, from pneumonia, of that famous English sportsman, the Marquis of Rochdale. The Marquis, Heinrich learned with interest, left no son, and was consequently succeeded by his nephew, Mr. Guy Chevis. Heinrich began to understand many things. He stole back to his chair, sat down once more and folded his hands over his stomach.
In about five minutes Lina came into the room. She wore a fashionable crinoline of cinnamon silk, and looked rather as though she had been crying.
"My dear Lina," he said, kissing her hand ceremoniously, "I can't express to you how glad I am to see you again after all these weeks. Really, you know, you've treated me very badly! I was certain, at one time, that the Ondine had vanished for ever from my world."
"Do sit down, Heinrich, won't you?"
He watched her covertly.
He had the idea, common to most sentimental and rather sensual men, that love sooner or later causes women to blossom into a veritable luxuriance of brilliant and unnatural beauty. Yet, if Lina glowed at all, it was surely with the waxen bloom of the white camellia, rather than with the deeper, more vivid, flush of the rose. She appeared to Heinrich more exotic than when he had last seen her, possibly because her eyes were heavily darkened, and her black hair strained away from the whiteness of her forehead to fall unconfined upon her neck and shoulders. She sat quite still and waited for him to speak.
"Well," he said, striving to appear at ease, "you have missed the ballet I spoke of, Lina, Le Papillon."
"Have I?" she said. She showed no interest.
"Yes. Do you know who is reported to have taken it up?"



230
"No." Nor did she care, from her tone.
Heinrich determined to startle her. He leaned forward.
"Taglioni," he said deliberately.
She looked at him, then. And her face was suddenly vivid with surprise and anger.
"Taglioni! I suppose you are trying to joke? Taglioni! She must be nearly fiftyl What does Taglioni want with a ballet?"
"She is not fifty, nor anything approaching it," Heinrich told her smoothly, "and you won't let me finish, Lina. Taglioni doesn't want the ballet for herself. She is preparing it for the future début of her young pupil, the little Livry. It is said," he continued idly, "that Livry much resembles Varsovina, as a dancer of elevation."
"Who says so?"
"Those people, Lina, who are only too ready to forget their favorites, even after so short an absence as two months."
"Well, I am ready to dance again, aren't I? Why do you suppose I sent for you?"
She looked sullen, affronted. Heinrich feit convinced that he held Varsovina at bay.
"I have had," said he, "an offer for a Spanish tour."
"What are the terms?"
He told her.
"That seems quite satisfactory. When?"
"When will you be ready to dance again, Lina?"
"In about a month, I suppose."
Still the same indifference. She dropped her eyelids and looked anywhere, save at him.
"I heard," he said, "the other day, of an original idea for you. An Oriental ballet, Barbe-Bleue, with you to dance the röle of Fatima. Would such a scheme appeal to you?"



"It sounds quite interesting. A change, at any rate, from the perpetual Ondine."
"But my dear friend, The Ondine will have to come to Spain, if you go. And I suggest Les Elfes, or possibly La Péri. But The Ondine, of course, is of supreme importance."
"I am so tired," she said, "of The Ondine. Really, at times I think I almost hate her."
"My dear, your biggest success!"
"Oh, yes, I know all about that. Give me a cigarette from the silver box near you."
"I am sorry to hear," Heinrich pursued, "that you have not been sleeping well, lately."
"Who told you that? Marie, I suppose? What a chatterbox the woman is! Yes. It's true. I don't sleep lately."
"If there's anything, Lina, that I can do for you "
"Thank you, Heinrich, there's nothing. I shall be all the better when I start work again."
"Is the child well?" he pursued.
"Paul? He's all right. Did I teil you—I'm sending him to live by the sea, at a place near Dieppe. I think the change of air will do him good."
"Then I suppose you will close the villa?"
"I am selling it."
And she looked at him then, as she said these words, for the first time during their interview. In her eyes, that were ringed with the dark cïrcles of insomnia, he surprised such a fury of grief and torment that despite himself, despite his exasperation with her for all her feckless ways, his heart was touched.
"My poor Lina!"
"Oh," she cried, "don't you begin to pity me. Otherwise you will make me weaker, I think, even than I am. And that," she added, "would indeed be a mistake."
I



"I beg your pardon, Lina. But there is no question of pity, only of a profound and most sincere admiration."
"At least," she told him, "you can never again say that I am less human than Elssler. Nor can you say that I have missed something that other women take as a matter of course. And, the next time that you see me dancing the Ondine, you will appreciate my talents more than ever before, for you will know that she isn't me, the Ondine, and that she never can be me again. You must applaud me as an actress, in the future, Heinrich, even more than as a dancer. Oh, yes, really, you know," she continued, looking at him mockingly, "you are the manager of a very gifted woman!"
Heinrich was secretly much impressed by his discovery of the fact that she, the woman carved of jade, as Weiss had once called her, was at last stricken and almost, it would seem, destroyed, by love. He was acute enough to realize that her suffering was real, not assumed; at the same time, although fascinated by so rare a spectacle, he was busy calculating exactly how much money he was likely to make out of the Spanish tour; and he was furthermore unable to suppress a feeling of the deepest satisfaction at Varsovina's unprotesting return to the arena of ballet.
He soon began to touch on those financial details so important to both of them. She listened for a few moments in silence, and then interrupted, asserting herself with all her old shrewdness.
"Really, Lina, to listen to you one would imagine that I was trying to swindle you out of every second peseta you are likely to make in Spain."
"So you are," said she dryly, "and what you don't take, the others will. However, I am fortunately able to take care of myself."
"Well able," Heinrich agreed with fervor.



"Long ago," she told him, lighting another cigarette, "Rosing explained to me that every one would try to make a fooi of me in business matters, simply because I happened to be a woman. I profited by his instructions."
"I imagine," said Heinrich, who was slightly stung by this extreme suspicion, "that those were not the only instructions given you by Rosing. If you had listened
as attentively to "
"Oh," said she, "you can spare yourself the trouble of continuing this conversation. I know very well what is at the back of your mind. You often heard Rosing warn me against falling in love—it was his favorite subject. However, what I have done I don't regret, and never will regret. I'm young, and have the right to feel such emotions, if I wish to. Furthermore, although you often choose to forget it, I happen to be a great artist, and as such have no use for conventions of any kind, not even, let me teil you, for the conventions of the ballet. I happen to be Varsovina, and I think you will agree with me that that, perhaps, is something to boast of, even if I have not danced for two months, and even if Taglioni talks of producing some wretched, half-trained pupil!
However "
"Lina, for God's sake don't upset yourself in this ridiculous manner! And to blame your misfortunes on me .. . that's neither kind nor true."
Heinrich was at his most soothing, his most velvety. He was well accustomed to such scenes, having managed temperamental stars of one kind or another for many years. And once again, watching Lina's white despairing face, he feit sincere pity for her.
"To be sure," he said gently, looking at her with real kindness, "to be sure you are a great artist, my dear, and you must never think that I forget it for a moment, no not even for one single moment."



"Yet you have never stopped flinging Taglioni in my face to-night! Never once! What about the others? What about Elssler? Isn't it her turn? And Cerito, and Grisi, and Lucille Grahn, and any one else old enough to be my mother!"
"Lina, I implore you to be calm!"
"And all the time you are living on me, making money out of me, and out of my reputation! And just because for once, for two months in a whole lifetime, I choose to forget that I'm Varsovina and live as other women do, with a lover that I have taken for love, and not for money, you torment me, and pester me, and never give me a moment's peace!"
But all the time that she was sobbing and stammering these incoherent broken words of abuse, she was thinking of Guy's letter to her, that lay hidden in her bedroom. A letter that was crumpled now, and stained with tears, but which she knew by heart. The words of that letter continued to dance like fire before her eyes, even while she stormed at Heinrich. . . .
"My sweet and beautiful darling,
"You know that my uncle is dead and that I can not come back to France. You know, too, without my telling you, that my love for you is so much stronger since we have been separated that sometimes I think it will drive me mad. You must come here to London; you have got to come. If you don't come to me, Lina, there will no longer be any joy in living. I am rich, now; I can do so much for you. It will be just the same, my precious, as though we were really married, and I shall love you and honor you all the days of my life. But if you will not come, I don't think that I have the courage to go on alone . . . you see, Lina, I can think of nothing but you, and your loveliness haunts me day and night. . .



235
And so on, and so on, for a dozen smudged and scribbled pages.
And she had answered, unable to express herself with his facility:
"My darling,
"I love you so, more than ever, I think. But I can not come to London. I told you why, once, in the forest, and it is difficult to say again in writing. But I can not come. Something beautiful happened when we feil in love. If I came to London, where you are so grand, to live as your mistress, it would not be beautiful any longer, only sordid. I know this very well. And I could not bear that. I would rather never see you again. But I will never stop loving you. Never, never, please believe that. . . . Lina."
Heinrich was still talking. He was explaining, with a rich and velvety eloquence, exactly why Varsovina surpassed in every single respect, every single ballerina, past and present, that he had ever known. Her elevation, her jouettés, her arabesques sur la pointe, her general technical excellence . . .
"Oh, do be quiet," she said suddenly, thinking only of Guy's letters, "you needn't bother to flatter me any more. Really, it isn't worth while. I shall go to Spain—on my terms—I shall dance divinely, I shall make money for both of us, I shall no longer moan about my love-affairs, there will be no more talk of Taglioni's pupil; and that, as f ar as I am concerned, is the beginning and the end of the matter."
And, as she spoke, she tried to stop herself from thinking, with a profound feeling of desolation, that Guy no longer now talked of marrying her, and that already, although they had been parted for so short a time, their first brief, furious ecstasy of love was over and done with



for ever. The sweet freedom of their life together in the forest had vanished inevitably, so that no magie, however dark, could ever recapture those first radiant and carefree moments. They had been young, passionately, divinely, young, for two short months; now that those months had fled, something else, far more important, had vanished with them—the very essence of their romance itself, and that had blown so far away that neither, she thought, would ever be fleet enough to find and seize it for their own again.
Ahead of her, like some long and dreary vista, there stretched a chain of lonely years, during which period of time she would naturally pirouette as Varsovina upon all the stages of all the world, and she supposed that sooner or later she would give herself to men again, if they in their turn gave her money enough, or jewels enough, to make these lifeless intrigues worth while to so famous a ballerina. After all, did it matter to any one save herself whether or not she took other lovers? It had never mattered very much before and she supposed, somehow, that affairs would sooner or later adjust themselves directly she began to dance again. Nothing so innocent and yet so passionate as her love for Guy, she thought once more, could ever last for very long, and Guy himself would shortly marry, and beget children, and think of Fontainebleau only as a deliciously romantic, and rather wicked memory, of his dashing youth.
And, thinking in this manner, she not unnaturally began to cry once more, and when Heinrich, who was by this time childishly delighted with his own tact, lent her a handkerchief, beseeching her to teil him what exactly was the matter, she clung to the lapels of his coat, and sobbed, and permitted her eyes to be dried, and told him at last, in a voice broken by emotion:
"It's only that I can't forgive myself because I know



so well that I shall be unfaithful to Guy, and I know, too, what is worse than anything, that I shall always, whatever I do, feel unfaithful to him, and that you must admit, seems just a little more than one can comfortably endure!"
And Heinrich consoled, manipulating his handkerchief with the greatest possible skill: "But Lina, this young Englishman—what can he possibly know of you and of your great genius?"
"He neither knows—nor cares—anything about my genius at all. Can't you really understand that it's possible to love me as a woman without remembering all the time that I'm a dancer?"
And this, of course, Heinrich was quite unable to do, although he continued to dry her eyes and utter those soothing sounds at which he was by this time so adept.
And when, after ten minutes or so, she raised her head and began to ask him—very faintly—further financial details of the Spanish tour, he realized, with a sense of acute satisfaction, that this most melancholy afternoon had not been entirely misspent. And soon Marie came in, with coffee, and lighted the candles and embraced her mistress many times, and then Lina smiled, and Heinrich kissed her hand, and tiptoed ostentatiously from the room, and it seemed as though another chapter of Varsovina's life was finished and forgotten, and done with for ever.







Part Foue CURTAIN CALL







C hapt er 33
It was in the autumn of 1865 that a young man, Ivan Borek by name, left Russia, where he had been accustomed to partner such famous ballerinas as Muravieva and Bogdanova, in consequence, it was said, of some dispute with the directors of the Imperial Ballet. He wandered, of course, to Milan, danced for a season at the Scala, and eventually drifted to Paris, having heard that Varsovina wished to engage a first-class male dancer for her troupe.
Varsovina, he learned, was away on a six weeks' English tour, and would not return for a fortnight. Borek was undecided; he was by no means a youth remarkable for any particular intelligence, and he really could not make up his mind whether to stay on in Paris or to seek employment elsewhere. He hung for some days about the Opera, smoking innumerable cigarettes and exchanging casual confidences with various members of the corps de ballet.
Finally he embarked upon a sentimental friendship with a young dancer named Pier re Véron, who, in exchange for numerous cigarettes, cups of black coffee, and insincere compliments, finally seemed willing to give him sensible advice as to his artistic future.
"Return to Russia, my dear Borek! Return immediately! What good will you do yourself over here?"
"That, unfortunately, is for the moment impossible."
"Then return to Milan."
Borek did not wish to say that he had not been invited to do so. Instead he lighted another cigarette, and remarked:
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"The idea of dancing as Varsovina's partner appeals to me enormously. She is a great artist; in Russia, although she is disliked for her neglect of her own country, she is everywhere regarded with the greatest admiration."
Pierre Véron laughed. "Varsovina was a great artist, yes. What of it?"
"What of it? What of The Ondine, The Snow Bird?"
Véron laughed again. "Ah, don't let us talk of that! For years, so many years now, Varsovina has given us The Snow Bird, and the poor creature, really, should be left in peace for a time—its wings are becoming abominably bedraggled!"
"In any case," Borek argued, "although Varsovina has never come to Russia I assure you that she is still a legend in my own country!"
"Why? Because she was supposed at one time to have a love-affair with the Duc de Morny? He's dead now, and they say she has no lovers at all, although it is tolerably certain that two years ago she was living with a disgustingly fat Greek named Anastasio Mauritini. Imagine the Snow Bird embracing a fat Greek! It is, all the same, a little incongruous!"
"I repeat," said Borek stolidly, "Varsovina is to us a legend."
"She is in any case an ill-tempered woman," the Frenchman commented placidly, "and the proof is that when once, admittedly a long time ago, she had the good fortune to find for herself a royal lover, he soon tired of her tantrums and packed her back to Paris. And he, in any case, was a lunatic. It must have been an enchanting ménage."
"Ah!" Borek pricked up his ears, "you mean the Grand Duke of Brandenstein, don't you? But they say that he built her a private theater in his palace, and covered her with jewels, and made her dance alone for him "



"Yes, and where is His Highness the Grand Duke at the present moment? In a lunatic-asylum! And why not? All his family are mad—he is not alone in his misfortune. And no one, now, dances in the theater that once upon a time was built for Varsovina. That's an old story, my dear Borek, old and moth-eaten. And I suspect that even the jewels are pawned."
There was silence for a moment while they both smoked, and Véron smiled spitefully. He had once been ignored by Varsovina at an audition. Borek, for his part, continued to ponder his future. He was, as has been remarked before, a youth to whom ideas of any kind flowed slowly, which possibly explains the fact that whenever he discovered an idea that seemed to him a good one, he continued to cling to it with a dumb but satisfied obstinacy. The idea of dancing with Varsovina seemed to him about the best idea that had ever occurred to him, and it would have required more than Véron's malice to convince him to the contrary.
"She often tours America, doesn't she?" he asked after a pause.
"Varsovina?"
"Varsovina, of course."
"Oh, yes," Véron yawned, "she départs there periodically, in search of dollars, I suppose."
Borek smiled; he had always wished to travel. Véron, watching with a feeling of faint jealousy the supple body, square shoulders and narrow Tartar face of his comrade, said presently, in a half-jesting tone:
"All the same, it seems to me a pity that such a fine artist as yourself should spend his days in wandering about the world for the purpose of propping up an old woman of nearly fifty!"
"That's absurd; she can't possibly be more than thirtyeight."



"Tu es charmant," Véron teased him.
Borek pursued, stubbornly: "Who is Varsovina's manager?"
"For years, many, many years, a German Jew named Heinrich. Then they quarreled, and parted. He came back to her again, and then once more there were disputes and then he left her for good. After that there were many managers, but no one would stay with her for very long. Now her affairs are conducted by an impresario well known in Paris, Leo Kessel."
"I have heard of the German, Heinrich. What happened to him?"
"Who knows? I think that he is in America. Perhaps Varsovina left him behind on her last tour."
They were silent for a moment; the smoke from their cigarettes curled dusky blue against the bright crispness of the autumn air and vanished; Borek shivered, although he was not cold; it seemed to him as though their brief and casual talk together had evoked something so vivid that it was as though the Russian legend of Varsovina herself glowed, miraculous as an ikon, before his very eyes—the Ondine, the Dryad, the Snow Bird, the exquisite artist of a hundred charming tales; yet at the same time he was melancholy, filled with romantic regret for something faded, and finished now, something stale and sad that had perhaps been created by a few malicious words from Véron, a few spiteful phrases that somehow, against his will, evoked for him the image of a tired, defeated and rather unhappy woman.
He said coldly, feeling that he hated the Frenchman: "She is the greatest dancer since Taglioni, and I am not forgetting Muravieva."
And then he asked for the bill and took himself off, for his friend had become insupportable.



Varsovina arrived home from her English tour in a state of extreme indignation. She had not been properly advertised, she had been prevented from taking with her her own orchestra, an incompetent partner had on one occasion let her fall, a member of her corps de ballet had had the audacity to produce a premature baby for which she, Varsovina, had had to pay, Kessel had exhibited a laziness unparalleled in her vast experience, Marie had left most of her dresses behind, and she was, in fact, at her most sullen when she arrived, after a bad crossing, at the hotel in Paris where she had engaged her usual suite of rooms.
And then, hearing that Ivan Borek was in Paris, seeking to dance with her, she at once became cunning and summoned Kessel.
Leo Kessel, most successful impresario of his period, was everything that Heinrich had not been, and all that they had in common was their race. Kessel was the impresario of comic opera; enormous, florid, greasy and emotional; like (although singularly unlike) the famous Lady Hamilton, he had, in private life, so much taste and all of it so very bad; he adored scenes and demonstrations of every kind; he also loved sweet champagne, pink carnations, quantities of scent, diamond rings, elaborate funerals, newborn babies, hysterics, and very fair, fat women. But these indulgences did not prevent him from appreciating the genius, Lina Varsovina, and his adoration of her art was the finest, most sincere and ardent emotion that he had ever known, or would ever know.
Yet while, from a business point of view, he directed his dancer superbly, he had nevertheless succeeded in aggravating, without realizing that he was doing so, every single fault, weakness and tantrum of which Lina, the woman, was capable.
With Heinrich this had not been so. They had quar-



reled, but they had understood each other uncommonly well. They had been good comrades. Lina and Kessel could never be comrades, nor indeed did they wish to be; they made scenes because Kessel liked scenes, and would indeed have been unable to conduct business, as he understood business, without this stimulus. Periodically they screamed and swore at each other, slammed doors, and vowed never to see each other again; both were conscious, all the time, of play-acting, and it is no exaggeration to say that both secretly enjoyed such demonstrations. Heinrich, when he quarreled, put all his heart and soul into the business; yet Heinrich, for all his admiration of Lina as a star, was quite incapable of worshiping Varsovina the artist, the great dancer, the prima ballerina, as a personality distinct from the woman that Guy Chevis had onceloved.
Kessel worshiped Varsovina and detested Lina herself. Their partnership was perhaps for this reason eminently successful. The woman, Lina, was to Kessel an insufferable creature—ill-tempered, vain, capricious and calculating, nor had he ever been able to discover anything to admire in her thin body, her white face, her black burning eyes. Yet when the other woman, the artist, the woman nam er) Varsovina, glided upon the stage to dance, she at once seemed to him a divinity, and very often there were tears in his eyes as he watched her exquisite and inspired movements.
It was to Kessel, of course, that Borek addressed himself on the day after the return to Paris of the Varsovina ballet; Kessel, who had been for some time meditating this capture, greeted him casually, talked to him for some time and finally announced that no arrangements could be made without the consent and approval of Varsovina.
"But," said he, adopting the paternal and mellifluous



tones of one who is conferring an enormous favor upon an inferior, "Varsovina will herself receive you to-morrow, at four o'clock at her hotel in the Champs Elysées. Here is my card introducing you, which you will be good enough to present at the caisse. And on no account, my dear Borek, be late for the interview, as that, I assure you, would create at once an unfavorable impression."
Borek smiled, placing the card carefully in his pocket.
"I have never yet," said he thoughtfully, "been late for a business appointment. In the school and the theater where I was trained, unpunctuality is not permitted."
And he went, still thoughtful, out into the misty sunset of the autumn day, whistling stray scraps from Robert le Diable, as he walked, while on every side of him swirled the bright opera-bouffe figures of the age—ogling, crinolined ladies, incredibly coquettish, and of course a host of Ruritanian-looking officers, picturesque still, but somehow a little tarnished, as though the gold braid of their uniforms was not wearing very well, and Borek thought idly, strolling along this crowded noisy boulevard, that of late the people of Paris, men and women both, had somehow the air of returning, at dawn, from some fancy dress ball at which they had enjoyed themselves immensely, but which had at the same time been a little exhausting. ... He grinned, and began to whistle an air of Offenbach.



C hapt er 34
Borek arrived at Varsovina's hotel exactly three minutes before four o'clock struck. The hotel itself (long since demolished) awed him not a little by its splendid opulence, nor did it tally in the least with his previous experience of dancers and their homes, for the ballerinas of Russia lived austerely and rather squalidly in humble houses of great antiquity, and some of them were even suspected of doing their own cooking, although it must be admitted that this dark secret had never actually been proved against any one above the rank of coryphée.
Borek presented Kessel's card and waited for about ten minutes, after which time he was conducted up-stairs into a private salon ablaze with gilt, draped in somber green brocade, and crowded with masses of brilliant, wilting, highly scented flowers. This room was untenanted except for a youth who sat hunched over the fire reading a yellow-backed novel and eating marron-glacés from an enormous beribboned box upon his knee.
"Good afternoon, Monsieur," said Borek politely.
"Good afternoon."
But the youth was obviously more interested in his novel and his bonbons than in the visitor, since he neither looked up from the one nor ceased to munch the other. Borek waited for about five minutes, then went across to the window, wherein was placed a beautifully wrought gilt cage in which four or five bright love-birds twittered, fluttering; he had not been there for a moment when his companion, still pretending to read, addressed him over his shoulder in French:
"Are you Borek?"
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249
"Yes."
And the dancer for the first time turned to examine this odd boy with a frank and unabashed curiosity. The boy was possibly fourteen, but might on the other hand have been at least seventeen; he sat so queerly huddled on the sofa that Borek suspected him of being misshapen; his head was singularly big, his forehead dome-like, his complexion waxen sallow; only his eyes, that were brighter than black jewels, seemed alive, and they were too alive, for they darted a restless malicious fire upon the Russian until Borek, an unimaginative creature, was conscious of a sudden hostile revulsion. He repeated, thrusting his hands in his pockets and drawling his words:
"Yes, I am Borek."
"Is it true that you were dismissed from the Bolshoy Theater? And if so, why?"
"There is such a maxim in life," Borek declared, "as minding one's own business. You, my young friend, have not yet managed to discover it."
But the youth only remarked, stuffing another marron into his mouth:
"They told me Borek was handsome. That is why I wanted to know who you were."
He moved slightly, bending down to pull a footstool nearer to him, and Borek observed with growing horror that he was hunchbacked. He turned away and pretended to look out of the window. But the high piping voice behind him continued almost without a pause:
"If you get this engagement you will take Novarro's place, and if you can't dance better than he you must be very bad indeed ... but perhaps you won't get the engagement. I heard Kessel talking about you this morning and he said that you would probably begin by asking too much money. And let me teil you that if you do that you will be very foolish indeed, because they won't



give it to you. They won't, for instance, pay you as much as you got in Milan."
Borek asked, really angry by this time: "And who in the devil's name are you?"
But at this moment the door opened, and a lady came impetuously into the room, very splendid indeed in a fashionable dress of coral-pink trimmed in the Spanish style with black lace, and wearing diamonds that glittered like ice upon her bosom. And Borek, gazing, knew that he was at last in the presence of Varsovina, the legend.
There was a pause.
Then Varsovina said to the boy, in a low angry voice:
"What are you doing here? I told you to go into the other room. Go away at once."
Without another word, but darting a furious glance at Borek, the hunchback climbed slowly to his feet, gathering together his novel and his bonbons, and shambled out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
"I am sorry," she said, "that you should have been disturbed. Won't you come and sit down near the fire?"
And she held out her hand for him to kiss. It was a very small hand, thin and delicate, with a yellow diamond the size of a walnut on the third finger. Borek, as he followed her toward the fire, was puzzled, for he was quite unable to guess the age of this woman. When she had first burst into the room she had seemed, with her coral crinoline and her black lace and her slight tiny body, to be no more than a young girl, and her face was vivid and eager, as though a light burned behind it. She had been beautiful then, the Russian legend come to life, but when he sat down beside her on the sofa he saw at once how thin her throat seemed beneath the jewels, and there were dragging lines about her mouth, and black sulky marks, like stains, beneath her eyes, and in a moment she seemed to him old, older indeed than was really the case.



Yet she was bewildering, for suddenly she smiled, and then once more she dazzled him and then he could have wept because this miracle had never danced in Petersburg.
She began without further preamble: "Have you ever seen me dance?"
"Alas! no, Madame; that is my greatest misfortune."
She looked serious, then, and told him, shaking her head: "But that was very careless! You should have crossed to London and seen me over there. I danced L'Oiseau de Neige and another ballet I have in mind for you—The Fisherman and the Naiad. Have you really never seen my Snow Bird?"
Borek explained that he had never, except for the season in Milan, danced anywhere but in Russia.
"Oh, teil me," she said, "about Muravieva. How much I'd love to see her! She is really brilliant, I hear."
"She is a very capable artist," he told her, suddenly cautious.
"Ah! But no longer so young, is she, poor Muravieva . . . and Bogdanova, and Petipa, and Lebedeva? . . . If you knew how much I regret that my engagements have never permitted me to dance in Russia! But who knows? Perhaps I shall be more fortunate in the future."
"Never," thought Borek, remembering the disgust that Varsovina, many years ago, had caused to the Imperial Theater by her inexplicable refusal to dance there at a gala performance for the Tsar.
She continued, looking directly at him with oval velvety dark eyes: "The idea of dancing with me as my partner, does it interest you at all?"
"Indeed it does," he said immediately; "it has been for a long time one of my dearest wishes."
"My present partner, Novarro, is impossible. Really, quite impossible. And when I go to Germany on my next tour I intend to give Paquerette, in which I know you



have danced before, Le Perle de Seville, and The Mountain Sprite. For these röles Novarro would be useless— worse than useless. And it is quite possible that I may have to produce The Ondine once more, although I have not yet made up my mind as to that."
Her voice was low, unflurried, monotonous. She spoke French like a Frenchwoman, but made no attempt to talk Russian. This did not surprise Borek, who knew very well that she belonged to some other vague nationality. It was in any case obvious that she was Jewish. He studied in silence her averted profile—her arched thin nose, and eyebrow that slanted like a dark wing, the powdered ivory of her cheek, the bitter line that ran from nose to mouth. And once again, seen thus, she seemed to him old, faded, exhausted, almost defeated. And then she turned to him suddenly with her face alight and her eyes glowing, and put one hand upon his, and was young again.
"Never mind," she said, "the matter is settled, and The Ondine has nothing whatever to do with it."
"Settled?"
"Yes. All that remains is for you to see Kessel tomorrow to arrange terms. The financial side of the business has of course nothing whatever to do with me. I have no head," she concluded mendaciously, "for figures, and am inclined always to be too generous. . . . However, you shall see Kessel, matters will doubtless arrange themselves, and sooner or later we shall both be rehearsing like demons! And so I won't keep you any longer, my dear Borek, but I can only say to you that I am quite enchanted by our whole arrangement!"
Once again the yellow diamond glittered close to his lips, once again he kissed a thin and tiny claw-like hand, and then was ushered, very courteously, very firmly, from a presence more imperial than that of the Tsarita. And



it was only as he walked down-stairs that he began to wonder exactly what arrangement had actually been concluded during the course of this fantastic interview, and exactly what salary he was likely to receive as a reward for supporting the fragile body of Varsovina on her next European tour.
When Lina was once more alone in her salon she immediately went across to her writing-table and began to scribble a letter to Kessel. But she had proceeded no further than the words, "On no account offer Borek more
than " when another thought occurred to her, and
springing to her feet, she opened the door and began to call her son's name.
There was no answer for a minute, and then the hunchback appeared, walking furtively upon his toes, his novelette tucked away beneath his arm.
"Well, what is it? I thought you said you didn't want me in here?"
She stood before the writing-table, arms folded on her breast, waves of coral silk billowing about her slender hips; unconsciously, perhaps, she posed, instinctively allowing her supple body to fall into those graceful and plastic lines that were habitual to her every movement. But Paul, regarding her moodily, was unmoved.
"What is it?" he said again.
She said, trying to control her temper, trying to make her voice sound gentle: "How many times must I teil you that you are not allowed in here without my permission? You have the other room in which to sit. Once and for all, understand that you have no business whatever in my private sitting-room."
"I wanted to see Borek for myself. I had heard he was so handsome. I don't think he is; he looks Mongolian or like a Tartar."
"To-morrow," Lina said, "you are going away to the



country, to Bougival, with Monsieur Girard, to study. And where is he, this afternoon, I should like to know?"
Paul grinned, slanting his eyes.
"With a woman, of course. It's his afternoon's holiday."
"Don't dare," she said, "to speak to me in that way of your tutor."
"Why not? Is he any the worse teacher for his loveaffairs? And don't think I'm inventing, either—I went through his drawers, the other day, when he was en vacance, and found a pile of love-letters from different women. They were amusing, too, and I should be very ready to quote from them if you would care for me to do so."
"I don't want you to do anything of the sort. I want
you to " She paused, for she really could not think
of anything she wanted Paul to do except to disappear for ever from her life, and that, of course, was quite impossible.
"Oh, good heavens!" she stormed at him in a fit of sudden despair, "how much easier everything would be for both of us if you could only show me even the slightest pretense of affection! What have I ever done to you that you should treat me—and every one else in the world— with so much rudeness and ingratitude?"
"What have you ever done?"
He studied her for a moment, his large head on one side, a malicious smile curling his lips, his deformed shoulder hunched above his ear.
"What have you ever done, maman chérie? Oh, nothing much, nothing of any great importance. You only produced me—fatherless—without even taking the trouble to stop dancing long enough to see that I was born like other people. What did you care? You were too busy adorning the ballet. You were too busy making con-



quests, as the Ondine. I don't particularly object to being a bastard, but I do object," and here he looked at her mockingly, "to being cast upon the world with a hump on my back. And for that reason, just because you happen to be my mother, you will have to make amends by giving in to me and to my wishes, if not now, at least when I am older."
"How dare you speak to me like that? How dare you insult me? Only wait until your tutor returns! I shall speak to him! I shall make him punish youl And you shall stay at Bougival all the winter "
But Paul, without another word, limped out of the room, and Varsovina, raging like a woman possessed, was left alone.



Chapter 35
Borek went down to the theater for a rehearsal called at ten o'clock to find that although he was early, there was one who had arrived before him,—Lina. She was already at work on the stage,—a tiny curious figure in the dim gloom of this empty, shrouded theater. She did not see him, and he waited for a moment, standing motionless in the stalls, watching her with a strange feeling of detachment that was mingled with a feeling of guilt, as though he were spying upon something.
She was absorbed, tremendously in earnest. She had never worn, nor would ever wear, the ugly black practising-dress of the ballet; she was dressed in a misty tulle skirt, once white, now almost lavender, and her shoulders were draped in a little bright pink Venetian shawl. She was working at the bar, concentrated, biting her lip, and her movements were brisk, precise, staccato, like those of a clockwork soldier. Then, as he continued to watch, she turned away from the bar, stretched out both arms—it was as though she spread her wings—and sprang into the air with an ease so effortless that it seemed as if she remained for a moment birdlike, poised exquisitely in mid-flight, and when she descended to earth once more, lighter than a feather, she was obviously enchanted with her own skill, for she spun round on one toe, clapped her hands gleefully and laughed aloud. Her laughter, eerie, silvery as a bubble, rang out queerly in the darkness of the empty theater.
Borek, still unable to rid himself of the feeling that he had been spying, called to her, waved his hand and ran through the pass-door on to the stage.
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She awaited him panting, her pale face glistening with sweat. Nor did she appear best pleased at this intrusion.
"I had no idea," she said, "that any one was watching me."
"I know you hadn't, Lina Varsovina." (He always addressed her in the Russian fashion.) "But the fact is that although I have been with you for two years and toured America with you twice, I have never once, never once in all that time, succeeded in arriving at the theater before you!"
"I like," she said, "to come down early. To-day I was here at nine."
And she smiled as she told him this, filled with a childish pride and confidence.
"It's twenty minutes to ten now," he said, puiling out his watch. "I must change."
"Not just yet. Not for five minutes. Talk to me for a moment while I rest."
And she wrapped herself in a sable cloak, from the depths of which she peered at him bright-eyed, like a squirrel.
He lighted a cigarette.
"I saw you perform a miracle," he told her, "as I stood in front just now."
"You mean my elevation? It's prodigious, isn't it? And I was only playing, amusing myself. That's nothing to what I can do when I try." She looked at him boldly, as she always did when she was lying.
Borek said nothing.
She continued gaily: "There's no other dancer in the world could have done what you saw just now! But these Americans don't really appreciate me. They pay to see me because I'm the fashion, that's all. Nevertheless, you remember last week, in Washington—the President was enchanted, wasn't he, and when he sent for me after



the performance he asked where my wings were hidden!"
She laughed again. Borek was still silent, and she demanded, suddenly suspicious:
"What's the matter? Why are you so sulky?"
"I am not sulky, Lina Varsovina. But I dislike seeing a great artist overworking herself as you are doing in this country. You were at the theater until one this morning. You come here again at nine. You are rehearsing this morning and dancing twice to-day. No ballerina on earth can stand such strain."
"That's because," she retorted, "you are comparing my standards to those of Russia, where the ballerinas are so pampered that they only dance about three times a month. I could never have endured such idleness. Long ago, when I was a child, I made up my mind that I would dance for the whole world." And she added, half to herself: "I am only happy when I dance. I grow so restless, waiting not only for the performance, but even for rehearsal! And it's over so soon."
They were sitting together back-stage on a flight of steps that were used in one of the ballets. Far away from them, in the shrouded gloom of the stalls, there passed, whispering and giggling to one another, the dim figures of Varsovina's company, hastening through the pass-door to change for rehearsal.
"I must go," Borek said. He got up from the step on which he had been sitting and put out his cigarette. Lina remained huddled in her furs, brooding, chin propped on her hand. He glanced at her face and was disturbed to see how thin and frail she seemed, how haggard and worn, even in the dim light of the theater.
"Teil me, Lina Varsovina, does it ever occur to you to sleep?"
"Oh, yes. Of course it does! Are you trying to play nurse to me, Borek?"



"No. But I think that perhaps you need one."
And he walked away, treading softly, as he always did, rnoving his hips, whistling, indifferent.
Shortly afterward the rehearsals started.
Almost immediately an argument that had recurred at intervals for at least twenty years broke out afresh between Lina and Weiss. She had been practising a dance with her own peculiar methods of the spacing of its music which entailed counting the bars singly instead of taking the phrases as they were written, and the rehearsal had no sooner started than she immediately began to introducé her own ideas of variation in tempo.
"This is quite impossible to synchronize," Weiss called to her at last. "I am a conductor, not a magician."
"What is that you say?"
"I say that instead of dancing in time to the music, you insist that the music should be played in time to you. And it is not necessary in any way to alter the tempo,— this stage, at least, is big enough."
"You will be good enough, Weiss, not to interfere with my own interpretations of my own dances. If I wish for music to be taken faster or slower than you like, if I wish for a sustained note to be held longer than you desire, all that is entirely my business, and your business is to do as I teil you!"
"Excuse me, Madame, but I would like to point out to you that I have the score before my eyes at this moment, and it seems to me a reasonable supposition that the composer himself is the best judge of the tempo in which his own work should be taken."
"What is that you say?"
Weiss repeated his argument in an even louder voice.
"How dare you speak to me like that? How dare you hold up the entire rehearsal for such impertinent nonsense?"



By this time they were both very angry and extremely hoarse from shouting with so much passion at each other. Weiss seemed on the point of snapping his baton across his knee; Lina, on the stage, stamped her foot, shading her eyes from the glare of the footlights, and had grown pale with fury at this public defiance from her musical director. And then a large figure secreted somewhere in the stalls reared itself suddenly to life, seeming, in the darkness of the theater, like some primeval monster uncoiling itself from the slime of a forgotten world,—Kessel. He advanced negligently toward the orchestra, tapped Weiss on the shoulder and whispered significantly in his ear for some moments.
"What's all this mystery?" Lina called down angrily.
And Kessel shouted back: "My dear Madame, I was only saying a word to our friend Weiss here. I think if you proceed now matters will be more satisfactory. In fact, I am sure of it. Shall we continue?"
Weiss shrugged his shoulders. Instead of breaking his baton over his knee he tapped upon the rail and the members of the orchestra, who had been lounging about with mocking grins upon their faces, at once stiffened to attention. Lina, too, who had been frowning like a Medusa, now threw off her sables, assumed once more her brilliant, exalted, ballerina's smile, and sprang up on her pointes. The dispute was over—forgotten. Kessel returned to his lair in the stalls. Weiss, as he conducted, smiled to himself, for the confidences of the impresario had restored his good humor and he no longer cared how drastically Lina altered the tempo of the music. Kessel had whispered, with an air of sapience combined with sympathy:
"Humor her, Weiss. She is a bad-tempered, hysterical woman, accustomed to being spoiled. This afternoon, do what you wish with the music. But humor her this morning or we shall not get a break before the matinée."



At half past twelve Lina went up-stairs to her dressingroom. Here a fire burned brightly, sheaves of red and yellow roses were clustered in every possible corner, and Marie, rather grizzled about the head, stood waiting for her mistress with a chemise in her hand.
"Give me my dressing-gown."
"Madame is not dressing?"
"No. I shall stay here. Send for some sandwiches, or some fruit, and then teil Duval that I want a score of Barbe-Bleue up here, to run over while I eat my lunch. But give me the dressing-gown first. Can't you see I'm shivering?"
She wrapped herself, not in the very splendid garment of wine-colored brocade trimmed with Russian sable in which she invariably received guests at the end of the evening, but in a shabby gray woolen affair that looked rather as though a caretaker had left it behind because she no longer wanted it, and lay down upon the sofa. Marie glanced at her critically. How well she knew that thin, pointed, white face, with its vivid mouth, its luminous dark eyes, its bitter weary lines! She thought with a sigh:
"We are no longer either of us as young as we were— it is many years since Bruges. . .
But she said nothing. She was wise, after so long a time in the service of Varsovina.
She came back with a ham sandwich, an apple and the score of the ballet Barbe-Bleue.
"What disgusting food," Lina said, looking at the plate as though it contained some medical curiosity or other.
"But naturally! Madame has plenty of time to go back to the hotel for lunch."
"Let me see—is this town called Baltimore?"
"Yes, Madame."
"It's a disgusting town."



She began to nibble the sandwich distastefully, propping up the score on her knee.
"I want a blue pencil, Marie."
Marie miraculously produced one.
"I shall show Weiss that I intend to be obeyed. Onee and for all I shall show him."
Marie asked, folding up underclothes: "Does Madame remember Monsieur Heinrich?"
"Of course I remember him. What of it?"
"I often wonder what has happened to him, that's all."
"Nothing has happened to him," Lina retorted, peeling her apple, "except his deserts. He is managing some screaming singer or other. And I am sorry for her. He was never the man for me."
"He was more of a gentleman than Monsieur Kessel."
"Oh, a gentleman! Who wants their manager to be a gentleman? And you had better go and get something to eat."
"Very well, Madame. I will be back before two."
"Did you put out the shoes I broke in this morning? The two pairs?"
"Yes, Madame."
"Very well, go. I shall try to sleep for half an hour."
But she did not sleep. She did not attempt to sleep. She became alert when she was left alone, stared at her face in a hand glass, scribbled impertinent comments upon the score of Barbe-Bleue, smoked countless cigarettes, polished her nails, glanced continually at her watch and sprang gladly off the sofa when Marie returned.
"Hurry! hurry! I want to be ready early!"



C hapt er 36
Once again, during the matinée, as Borek clasped the thistledown lightness of her body and watched her whirl in those incredibly brilliant jouettés that always gave to her the impression of soaring, as though winged, in the air above his head, he was conscious of an adoration for this glorious artist. And then, as they collided for a brief busy second in the wings, she hissed in his ear like an angry serpent:
"Your tights! Must I really teil you again? You are never to dance with me unless you wear tights!"
And then he knew, not for the first time, that exasperation for Varsovina's arbitrary methods that affected, sooner or later, every one who had business dealings with her. He was not surprised therefore, to be summoned to her room after the performance. She flung at him, still wrapped in the gray woolen dressing-gown:
"Borek, you displease me, and I refuse to be displeased by you. When you dance with me I insist upon your wearing tights! I insist! Is that understood?"
"Not entirely," Borek told her placidly. "I dance better barelegged. Nor are tights suited to every röle. You can not dogmatize about my costumes in this way, Lina Varsovina. About my dancing, yes. That is another matter. But as to whether I wear tights or not, that is entirely my own affair. Barbe-Bleue is Oriental, barbaric. In such a ballet tights are out of place."
She looked at him, perhaps for the first time since their association together, with real anger. But Borek's narrow brown face and slanting eyes remained perfectly calm, even sleepy, as though he noticed nothing unusual.
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She said coldly: "Those are my orders."
"Orders? I don't take orders, Lina Varsovina, even from you, about such matters as to whether I wear tights for a certain röle or whether I don't. About my dancing, yes. I bow to you as an artist. But you are not here to dictate to me about my costumes."
She said, turning white to the mouth: "We wiU see what I am here for. This ballet is mine. The troupe is mine, the costumes, the scenery, even the theater, while I am dancing in it. When I give an order, that order is obeyed. Do you understand that?"
"I will not wear tights in Barbe-Bleue," Borek repeated monotonously.
"Then I shall dismiss you. At once, immediately. We shall see whether or not you are indispensable. Biretti will dance your röle."
"Ca m'est égal," Borek told her mulishly. "I have had several offers since I have been in America."
And without even waiting for the royal dismissal he walked nonchalantly out of the dressing-room.
Lina, aghast, sent at once for Kessel.
"It's Borek! Simply because I asked him to wear tights in Barbe-Bleue! He's leaving me! But he is. I teil you, and at once! He won't dance to-night!"
"Now, Lina," Kessel said calmly, "I know very well that you have concocted some absurd quarrel with Borek. And you can not afford to do it. He is a fine artist, but he will not submit to your caprices. Nor do I blame him. You can not treat Borek like a naughty child—he is too important to you and to your ballet."
"I shall treat him," she said sullenly, "exactly as I please."
"Then you will lose him. He is no Weiss, to put up with your tantrums for twenty years ... I beg your pardon, ten. ... I shall find Borek, and try to soothe him, but



only on the understanding that you behave to him like an angel this evening." And he continued, with malice, "You really must understand, Lina, that Borek is not fond enough of you to submit to your caprices. One day he will say good-by and—leave. Then you will be sorry."
She snapped, with her face to the wall: "Oh, go away, Kessel, and try to arrange mat ter s. I hate you all."
Kessel at last returned, to announce, not without a certain pride, that Borek consented to stay, but that he refused absolutely to wear tights in Barbe-Bleue.
That evening they gave The Snowbird, and Borek, as the fairy prince who slays, by mischance, the enchanted princess, wore his tights. Lina, consequently, although she had lost, and not won, her victory, was radiant. In her brief tunic of snowy plumage, with white feathers crowning the jetty blackness of her hair, she was fleet, ethereal, fairer than a summer cloud. And her dancing was inspired.
Afterward, in her dressing-room, swathed in her sabletrimmed wrap, she received various notabilities of the town. She was tired, but did not show it. She was unfailingly gracious and tactful to these ponderous judges and senators and to their goggle-eyed loquacious wives. Each one of them, it seemed, possessed a small daughter who could dance like a dream, like a little Varsovina.
"Really, Madame, without wishing to boast, we can't help but say that little Elsie shows a really remarkable talent for dancing. Her teachers are just amazed by her progress. Can't imagine, either, where she gets it fr0m,—not from me, nor yet from her ma. But there it is."
And Lina smiled, and gave them roses for their buttonholes, and asked all manner of questions about little Elsie, and repeated several times that the audiences of Baltimore were more intelligent, more enthusiastic, than anywhere



else in America. And when they had gone, and she saw that it was long after twelve o'clock, she flew into a rage, and stamped her foot, and bade Marie be very quick indeed, for she was in a hurry.
And then, as she was dressing, there came a knock at the door, and Borek asked if he might come in.
"Oh, I suppose so. But don't look—I am undressed. What do you want?"
"Only to apologize, Lina Varsovina, for my rudeness this evening. I am sorry, but I can't dance Barbe-Bleue in tights. But I had no business to teil you so as abruptly as I did to-night. Will you forgive my Russian manners?"
She was suddenly exhausted, and feit that she would not very much care if he wanted to dance with her stark naked.
"Oh, yes, yes, yes! Anything, so long as I am left in peace!"
"Then will you come and have some supper with me, Lina Varsovina?"
"No," she said, greasing her face, "I am too tired. I have been here in the theater since nine this morning. It's past midnight, now. I only want to go back to my hotel, rest myself, and eat my food all alone. I feel unsociable, Borek, and I can't help it. Another evening, if you like. And now, good night."
"Good night, Lina Varsovina."
She was white and tired when she left the theater. A few admirers awaited her patiently outside the stagedoor, and to these she handed, with an air of imperial courtesy, a handful of red and yellow roses from her bouquets.
And then she drove back to her hotel.
When she arrived in her private sitting-room an enormous fire burned in the grate and before this fire stood a waiter, hovering almost paternally about a little supper



table laid for one. She went into the bedroom, took off her hoop and skirt, wrapped herself in the very twin of the gray woolen dressing-gown at the theater, and bade Marie rub her feet.
"Lie back, then, Madame, on the sofa."
Lina obeyed, closing her eyes.
"That's nice . . . gently, now . . . yes, like that."
The feet of Varsovina were paler, that night, than white doves, and as beautiful. She opened her eyes to regard them with a real tenderness, gazing down at the delicate arched insteps, the fine-cut heels, the rosy polished nails. But from the tip of each toe there oozed a drop of blood, and she sighed.
"That's enough. Give me my Indian moccasin slippers. Supper must be ready—you needn't wait up."
She ate her supper alone before the fire,—a quaint, almost dowdy figure in the gray woolen wrap. Chicken a la Maryland, salad, cheese, a bottle of red wine. And the waiter, assiduous in his attentions, watched her closely, with an almost passionate interest, for his wife wanted to know all about Varsovina, and he knew that she would scold him unless he remembered every minute detail of the evening. And so he concentrated his attention upon this thin, tired, little woman with her waxen face and her long black hair, like a horse's tail, until she looked up suddenly and fixed him with the most brilliant, the most fiery dark eyes that he had ever seen in his life.
"What," she wanted to know, "are you staring at?"
"I beg your pardon, Madame."
"You needn't wait. Come back for the table to-morrow morning."
This was of course highly inconvenient, but in a manner of speaking he had brought it upon himself, and so there was really nothing to do but to obey. He tiptoed out of the room, and Varsovina was left alone.



She lighted a cigarette and opened a letter from Paul, that had arrived by the last mail. Paul, who was at Louvain University, where he was supposed to be studying, wanted more money. The matter, he said, was urgent. He feit tolerably certain, he informed her, that his maman chérie would not refuse this modest request, and the veiled and covert insolence of his letter had the effect of evoking the writer himself before her eyes, so that for a moment she stared resentfully into the fire, where Paul confronted her, with his humpback and sly smile, and then a piece of coal crashed, and the image of her son vanished in a myriad of gold and silvery sparks, each one more beautiful than the petals of a rose.
"Money, money!" she grumbled to herself, "does he think I dance only to pay his debts?"
She kicked off her slippers and once more examined with every sign of affection the pale loveliness of her feet. A morbid thought occurred to her.
"When I am dead, they will take a cast of these, because, af ter all, they are unique, they are Varsovina's feet!"
And she remembered how long ago Gavarni had sketched one foot and how, with a charming courtesy, he had scribbled underneath his drawing: "Pourquoi chaus-
ser une aile?"
She smiled then, curling up her toes, and Paul was forgotten. That had been long ago, many years ago, when she was living at the rue d'Antin and Pierre de Beauvais, whom she had never liked very much, had been her lover. And before Pierre there had been Nordstrom, whom for various reasons she preferred to forget, and before him Rosing, her husband.
Oddly enough, for she was not a woman who cared to live in the past, the name of Rosing still had power to move her. She would never cease to be grateful to him,



nor would she ever cease pitying him, for she knew only too well that although he had lived to see her famous he had after all failed in his dearest ambition. He had longed always to immortalize his own name through hers, and in that ambition he had failed, for no one, now, thought of Rosing when they called Varsovina the empress of the dance. He was forgotten; quite forgotten.
"And that," she thought with a sigh, "he would have minded more than anything. Poor, poor Rosing!"



Chapt er 37
It was not good for Lina to eat her supper alone, before her fireside, when she was tired, and melancholy, and far away from Europe. Sooner or later, inevitably, on these occasions she thought of Chevis, and this was a memory not sweetly sad, as Rosing's was, but one that still had power to stab her with a vivid pain against which she fought with all her might, but was always vanquished, for never, she thought, could she forget the last letter that she had ever received from her lover.
That again had been written many years ago, at a time when her relations with the Grand Duke of Brandenstein were causing a joyous European scandal of the type that would later, many years later, be for ever immortalized as the ideal theme of the romantic musical comedy. And yet there was nothing particularly joyous about the Grand Duke himself, nor about his intrigue with Varsovina, nor about Varsovina's state of mind during the time of their intrigue together. It was indeed one of the more melancholy memories of Lina's life and she seldom talked of it to any one.
Soon after her parting with Chevis she had toured Germany, and when in due course she danced before the King of Saxony this monarch invited his cousin, Eitel Gustav of Brandenstein, to be present at a gala performance of La Péri. Eitel Gustav, enormously tall, round-shouldered, idealistic, gentle, eccentric and dreamy, so seldom left the confines of his Duchy that it had never before occurred to him as a possibility that there could exist upon the face of the earth a creature so vivid, graceful, and glamourous as Lina Varsovina in La Péri.
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He stared at her in a dazed manner during supper, returned to Brandenstein the next day, and there immediately took to his bed. When pressed by his court physician for details of his symptoms he replied that he was in love with the dancer Varsovina, and would assuredly die unless she came to him on the wings of the wind. But the dancer Varsovina was fulfilling engagements in Budapest and Vienna, and Eitel Gustav, refusing all nourishment, lay with his face to the wall for a fortnight. Shortly afterward he rallied enough to send for his son, the twelve-year-old Frederick Adolphus, to whom he confided, in a weak and quavering voice, his plans for the enlargement of his army, his plans for the modernization of the royal palace, and his own eccentric desire to be buried in a Greek temple on the middle of a swampy island near his shooting-lodge. He was, he concluded, failing rapidly. Whereupon the young Archduke, blubbering, ran for the doctors, and when the doctors came running in their turn to the royal bedside, Eitel Gustav, in a voice even weaker than before, declared once again the impossibility of continuing life without the support by his side of the dancer Varsovina.
He had, incidentally, no Grand Duchess, this lady having eloped, six years earlier, with her son's tutor. The doctors, in view of this unfortunate mishap, possibly decided that feminine influence, even of an illegal nature, could only have a stimulating effect upon their royal master; in any case an equerry was forthwith dispatched to Varsovina in Budapest bearing with him a note from the Grand Duke and a yellow diamond as big as a walnut.
Most singular of all, considering her independent character, Lina, her Viennese engagements terminated, came at once to Brandenstein. Perhaps, like most women of her time and profession, she was by no means averse to the notoriety inseparable from a royal love-affair. Per-



haps she was really touched by the feeble writing and humble supplications of Eitel Gustav's letter. Perhaps she was suitably impressed by the magnificence of the yellow diamond. Or perhaps she was so unhappy, still mourning for Guy Chevis, that she did not care what she did or where she went.
In any case she arrived in Brandenstein, where the Grand Duke, supposing her to be Russian, and wishing her to feel at home, caused hundreds of tons of salt, simulating snow, to be piled along the road leading to his palace, and himself went forth to meet her, driving a sleigh that was drawn by two white Arab ponies. She was forthwith installed in a pavilion adjacent to the royal park, in the salon of which Eitel Gustav, his mind still confusedly revolving the connection between Russians, snow and wintry revels, had caused to be placed an enormous, brilliant Christmas tree. She dined that night at the castle in the company of her host and of his two eccentric spinster aunts, who apparently supposed her to be a Russian princess dallying with the idea of marrying their nephew, and Eitel Gustav, cutting suddenly into an enormous pie, triumphantly released a flock of white pigeons with silver bells around their necks, which so much astonished the aunts that one of them choked, wedged a fish-bone in her throat, and was led from the table by her lady-in-waiting. Nor was this lady seen again for three days.
And so began an episode in Lina's life which lasted for nearly six months. Once she left Eitel Gustav to fulfil an engagement in Paris; during her absence he tried to drown himself, and when she returned she was made to promise that never, never again would she leave him even for an hour. It was then that she realized for the first time with a chili of misgiving that she was virtually a prisoner in this cold, drafty, primitive castle, where rats scuffled, and ghosts glided, and two crazy old women



fanned themselves frantically on the most bitter days, and where a gentle lunatic with eyes like a dog's bedizened her with what were left of the Brandenstein crown jewels.
In one wing of the castle was a chapel, where gaudy statues, bleeding hearts and paper roses ran rampant; in the other was situated a tiny theater, where once, years ago, Eitel Gustav's mother had encouraged the performance of amateur theatricals. It was here, on a little cramped stage with a provoking "rake," that Lina danced for her lover. In Paris the gossips said that he had built the theater specially for her. But Lina had fallen into an apathy of depression and cared not at all what Paris said of her. She danced at least once a week for the mimic court of Brandenstein, and sometimes, when she saw devotion in the Grand Duke's vague tired eyes, she could have wept for him, had she one single tear left for any one but herself.
And then, like a bombshell shattering this strange nightmarish existence, came Guy's letter. She read it once, twice, a third time, and feit dazed to think that he could say such frightful things to her. That it was the letter of one cruelly wounded, who insulted her out of despair, to conceal his own youthful pride and grief, did not once occur to her, for she was herself too deeply in love to make allowances for her lover. His letter reproached her bitterly, savagely, for her infidelity. He reminded her that they had once sworn to love each other all the days of their lives, and that in his view, despite their separation, they were bound together irrevocably, by every sacred tie save one. Now, however he would release her, and would furthermore in the future consider himself equally free. He wished her all good fortune in the profession she had chosen for herself, and would ever be honored that she had endured, even for two short months, the society of so insignificant a person as himself. It occurred to him, in-



cidentally, that he had neglected, at the time, to offer any financial compensation for the demands that he had made upon her time. Perhaps she would be kind enough to let him know to what extent he was in her debt? And he remained, hers very sincerely, Rochdale.
She received this letter on a gray November day when an east wind howled down the flagged passages of the castle and outside a steely sky hung heavy with the snow that was to come, and wild geese wheeled above the darkness of the lake, and the sentry, pacing on the terrace outside, looked blue and pinched and huddled in the intense cold.
And she thought, standing at the French window with Guy's letter crumpled in her hand, that the desolation of this day must remain for ever vivid in her mind as a monument to all the bitterness and grief of which the human heart is capable, and that never, however long she lived, in whatever sweetness and sunshine, would she forget the windswept misery of her present surroundings.
And as she stared upon the leaden grayness of this bleak day, quite suddenly the snow began to fall, or rather to drift, aimlessly like tufts of white plumage whirling against the dark and livid sky, and then a great bird screeched, that had somehow been separated from its comrades, and circled wildly in the air, as though the wind beckoned it. And then, at that moment, the ghost of an idea was born in Lina's mind, and did much, perhaps, to save her reason, for she thought suddenly of a ballet that should be called The Snow Bird; and as she pressed her face against the frosty pane, the better to stare upon all that was gray and windy and wild outside, Guy's letter fluttered to the ground, and for a moment she did not even notice that it had fallen from her hand.
And then the Grand Duke summoned her to his presence.
She knew at once that he had arranged a Christmas



tree for her, for this eccentricity had become an almost daily diversion in their lives. It gave him exquisite pleasure to dress these trees with candles and tinsel and with glass balls of silver and gold; even more did it delight him to deck the dark fir branches with all that was left to him of the crown jewels of Brandenstein. These jewels it was his custom to hang about her neck, after a speech in which, oblivious of the time and season, he was wont to extol what he still persisted in regarding as the typically Russian custom of the Christmas tree. The fact that at his elbow there waited a lackey, bearing a velvet cushion upon which, after a proper demonstration of gratitude on Lina's part, the jewels were invariably replaced, so that the lackey in his turn, might replace them, according to orders, in the safe indicated for such purposes, worried Eitel Gustav not at all. Like a child, he lived in the present, and when he pretended to present his jewels to Lina he honestly believed that he did give them to her, and that the lackey, and the cushion, and the inevitable safe, were all a part of the game that was best forgotten.
And Lina, who was always pitifrl of Eitel Gustav, played this game admirably, crying out with delight as each dirty, badly set diamond necklace was hung about her neck. When at last her arms were heavy with bracelets, and when finally the royal crown of Brandenstein itself pressed painfully upon her brow, the lackey, realizing that his master's playtime was over, would step forward to announce briskly:
"Highness, it is time to lock up the safe."
He might have said instead that it was time for the toys to be put away for the night. Eitel Gustav always sulked for a while and then pretended not to see that Lina was obediently employed in taking off the jewels and replacing them upon the velvet cushion. When this cere-



mony was over another lackey marched into the room with an ecclesiastical snuffer and extinguished the colored candles on the Christmas tree. The Grand Duke knew, then, irrevocably, that this play was over and done with for the day.
Af ter the Christmas tree came dinner, a basilisk meal partaken of in the shabby, glacial state dining-room in the company of the young Archduke and the Archduchesses Grisele and Ottilie, both of whom continued throughout the meal to fan themselves, in a sort of unremitting frenzy, despite the whistling drafts that never ceased piercing, like arrows of ice, their skinny unprotected bodies. Lina ate demurely, wrapped in her Russian sables. The Archduke Frederick Adolphus, a stout, taciturn, uninteresting boy, never stopped stuffing himself nor paused to raise his eyes from his plate. Only Eitel Gustav, eating no more than a bird, continued to fix his mistress with that enchanted gaze that sometimes so greatly disconcerted her.
After dinner the aunts played patience for an hour or so, Frederick Adolphus fought mimic battles with wooden soldiers, and the Grand Duke, quickly tiring of these diversions, would soon escort Lina homeward to the little pavilion in the park. They always drove together in one of the royal barouches that was drawn by a pair of very old and very thin white horses, and often this equipage waited outside the pavilion until the sky was barred by the rosy lights of dawn, and then the coachman, who was fat and asthmatic, would rouse himself, straighten his cockaded hat, and retie his muffler, for he soon learned that his master never returned home later than daybreak.
Lina was not particularly fond of the pavilion, but she liked it more than she liked the drafty, damp and ramshackle royal castle. The pavilion was cold, too, but at least it seemed cheerful, with its white bearskins spread



277
like mantles of snow upon the floor, its conservatory, that was always brilliant with the rainbow blooms of rare azaleas, and its aviary, in which screamed and chattered a score of gaudy, bright-winged tropical birds. There were French windows in the little salon, and these overlooked an ornamental pond in the middle of which a group of dolphins clustered about a conch shell that was in reality a fountain, flinging jets of water like glittering silver plumes, to splash and babble in the grave stillness of the garden outside.
And it was here, in this little toy house, that the Grand Duke, for the first time in his life, found happiness, catching it, capturing it, as though it were one of the gay birds fluttering in the aviary near by.



Chapter 38
He was a humble, a supplicating lover, and would crouch for hours at his mistress' feet, content to gaze upon her in silence, stroking her hand, sometimes raising it reverently to his lips.
"They say," he told her sometimes, "that I am mad, and not any longer fit to govern my country."
And he looked at her appealingly, as though begging her to testify as to his sanity.
She would console him mechanically, thinking, as she did so, that it was she, Lina Varsovina, who was mad, and that compared to this madness of hers, this desperate hungry craving for the lover who had so bitterly insulted her, Eitel Gustav, with his gentle childish ways, his thoughtfulness, his unselfishness and his grave simplicity, was the very personification of all that was sane, pleasant, admirable and sympathetic. And if he was mad he was also extraordinarily acute. Once he said, fixing her with his soft brown eyes:
"Lina, you are not happy. I haven't the power to make you happy. You are in love with some one who has hurt you. That's the truth, isn't it, my dear?"
"Oh, I don't know . . . don't let's talk of the past, but only of the present."
"But it is true, isn't it?" he persisted.
And as she did not answer he continued:
"And for hurts of that kind there is at the time no cure. I know, Lina, because once, long ago, I loved the Grand Duchess, and you know that she ran away from me, with my son's tutor. And I loved her, at that time, with all my heart. Yes, really, I assure you that I did, although
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our marriage was a business settlement, arranged for us by two governments. But the Grand Duchess was such a pretty woman, and although I could never see what she found to admire in the tutor—a very tedious man—I can quite understand that she disliked living here in Brandenstein. You see, she came from Parma, the country of violets, and she was always shivering here, always complaining of the drafts. But, really, I loved her.
"And you love me, now?" she asked, locking her arms
about his neck.
"I worship you. You are my divinity, and at night I say my prayers to you. And I want to shut you up here, so that you shall never escape from me. What's the matter? Are you cold, too?"
"I don't know. I think perhaps that I am sorry for both of us."
And this might have been true had it not been for the fact that her heart, her warm and beating vital heart, seemed to be locked away in a prison of ice, so that none might touch or thaw it, and even Eitel Gustav was like a figure in a play, to be pitied at a distance, and then at once forgotten, since every nerve in her body continued to cry out for Guy, who was all her world, and without him, living in the shadow, however remote, of his hostility, there was nothing left for her but darkness and cold, and by this time she was sorely afraid of both.
"To-morrow night," she said, kissing the mouth of Eitel Gustav, 'Til dance for you, in the little theater at the castle."
"What will you dance, my beloved?"
She answered, hurting herself wilfully: "The shadow dance from The Ondine. The dance that I can never learn to play at the piano. And I'll dance divinely."
Had she wished, she could have ruled, not only this gentle madman, but his whole country, his whole army,



his whole world, but she did not wish. She was no Lola Montez, no political, scheming courtezan; she was purely an artist, a slave and mistress of the theater, and there is no question that sooner or later, when she had had time to recover from her apathy of grief, she would have spread her sylphide's wings and flown away for ever from Brandenstein and Eitel Gustav. But as it happened her destiny was solved for her, so that it was not necessary even to make this effort.
One night at dinner the Grand Duke informed his aunts that within the next week they would be permitted to witness the coronation in the Cathedral of Lina Varsovina, as Grand Duchess of Brandenstein and Kunitz. In many respects the aunts were madder than their nephew, but the Archduchess Grisele, who was still occasionally sane, and very frequently pious, saw fit to visit the Bishop, with whom she enjoyed a long and deliciously intimate conversation. The result of this tête-a-tête was that the Bishop, who had previously thought it kinder to ignore the Grand Duke's shameful intrigue, at once decided two things: first, that Eitel Gustav must once and for all be tamed; second, that this dancer, this Scarlet Woman, this court harlot, must leave Brandenstein, and the sooner the better.
The Bishop, once roused from ecclesiastical somnolence, became very definitely a man of action; he endeavored so conscientiously to tame the Grand Duke that he undoubtedly precipitated an attack of homicidal mania that might, without his well-meant homily, have remained dormant for many months, even for many years; Eitel Gustav, perhaps unreasonably vexed by this intolerable interference with his personal liberty, at once produced a carving knife, and announced impulsively that he had decided upon a holocaust; the Bishop, of course, should be slain first, then it would be the turn of the aunts, and



then of Frederick Adolphus, whose table-manners had for some time disgusted him; he would then, having rid himself of these encumbrances, be free to pursue his own life, with Lina Varsovina as his legal consort. And she should be crowned in greater state even than the Grand Duchess, she who had so often pined for the softer air of Parma . . . thus arguing, Eitel Gustav advanced upon the Bishop with the carving knife (which he had apparently for some months secreted in his private desk) grasped most menacingly in his hand.
The Bishop, who was, as he never afterward ceased repeating, a man of peace, immediately fled from the royal presence. Outside, in an anteroom, he collided with Count Landsfeld, the Grand Duke's equerry, to whom he confided, panting heavily, an account of his peculiar interview with his ruler. Count Landsfeld hastened in search of the royal doctor.
Meanwhile, the Grand Duke, left alone in his study, put away his carving knife and, sending for Lina, summoned an emergency meeting of the Brandenstein Cabinet. When Lina arrived at the castle she was greeted by her lover, who was alone in his apartment. She thought him pale and tired, but detected no evidence of unusual eccentricity. Folding her in his arms, he asked her tenderly if she loved him. When she had replied in the affirmative, he continued, caressing her hair:
"Then will you trust me, my beloved?"
"Of course I trust you."
"And you don't think I am mad?"
"No! Why do you always ask me that? I think you are as sane as, if not saner than, other men that I have known."
And she looked at him boldly, as was her custom when she was lying.
"Then come with me."



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And holding her hand he conducted her, to her great astonishment, out of the study, across the now deserted anteroom, and into that large official apartment in which the state affairs of Brandenstein were habitually conducted. Here were arrayed in a row a number of pompouslooking gentlemen whom Lina instantly recognized as the ministers of the Duchy. Standing rigidly at attention they bowed to Eitel Gustav, but at the same time their eyes, their little stupid glancing eyes, were fixed upon Varsovina with hostility, mistrust and good honest Brandenstein resentment.
Eitel Gustav said with a charming simplicity and dignity: "Gentlemen, I sent for you to-day because I wished to present to you your new ruler, Madame Varsovina. I am certain that you will serve her as faithfully as you have always served me, and indeed I can conceive of no higher praise."
And he smiled, still clinging to her hand. But Lina, who had just called him sane, drew away, and for the first time looked at him with something approaching horror. As for the ministers of Brandenstein, their faces expressed a startled disgust that was almost ludicrous, and indeed one, who held some rather obscure office, so far forgot himself as to murmur, "Down with the concubine!"—af ter which demonstration he choked, shuffled away behind his comrades, and hid his face in an enormous red silk handkerchief. But the mischief was done, and these gentlemen of Brandenstein, that had but one moment before been standing with so much precision, so much formality, like a row of portly black soldiers, now broke up into angry groups, and whispered threats, and gesticulated, muttering to one another and appeared really very formidable indeed. Eitel Gustav continued to watch them with a passionate interest, and he was white to the lips, and his eyes sparkled with insanity.



As for Lina, in one moment she awoke as though from a trance, and forgot her misery, and was alive once more, and ardent and alert. In that brief moment she forgot Guy Chevis, and Eitel Gustav, and the politicians of Brandenstein, and her pavilion in the park, and remembered only one thing,—that she was a genius, the greatest dancer of her age, and that she had demeaned herself by becoming a ducal concubine, and that she must go away at once, for ever, and no longer permit herself to be insulted by these gross and stupid men. She turned to the Grand Duke.
"Highness, will you be good enough to allow me to withdraw from this discussion?"
And without waiting for his permission, for he stared at her as though distraught, all unconscious of his Cabinet, she swept him a curtsy of exquisite dignity, and left the presence there and then, without further preamble of any kind.
And it was fortunate, perhaps, that she acted as she did, for she was at least spared the ghastly spectacle of the Grand Duke's forcible removal, in a strait-jacket, to some remote, bat-infested turret of his castle, that he was to leave only several weeks later, and then for a sanatorium on the Rhine, where he was doomed to stay until his death, after many years.
That very night, Lina was formally compelled to leave Brandenstein. She obeyed, in silence. Soldiers escorted her to the frontier. She never spoke once, until she reached Berlin. Then, at last, she spoke, but only to herself, to her own pale reflection in the mirror.
She said: "I have humiliated myself, and I have certainly humiliated that unfortunate Eitel Gustav. As for Guy, he no longer counts in my life. Nor, for the matter of that, does Eitel Gustav. But I have shamed myself, for I have genius, and I have quite forgotten it.



And now I shall dance as I have never danced before, and perhaps I shall forget Brandenstein. But I don't think that I ever shall, for I have been even madder than the Grand Duke."
But at least she was more fortunate than Eitel Gustav, for she, after a period of bewilderment and despair, had recovered her sanity, nor was she compelled to live as he was forced to do, in a padded room, the window of which was placed so high that he might not even—he who so deeply loved beauty—gaze out upon the tranquil waters of the Rhine and find a little solace in so much beauty. On the contrary, he was compelled by the cruelty of an inexorable destiny to drag out the remaining ten years of his life in the futile delusion that he had become the wretched child Dauphin of the Revolution, that he was imprisoned in the Temple, and that his attendant, a kindly man, was none other than Simone, the brutal cobbler. . . .
Such was the end of Eitel Gustav, hereditary Grand Duke of Brandenstein and Kunitz.
Lina's fire, that had burned with a marigold brightness when she first began her supper, sank into smoldering ruins long before she had forgotten Eitel Gustav, his fantastic toy duchy, her gimcrack pavilion in his castle park, and Guy's last letter, the letter doomed to remain for ever unanswered. But she realized, with a curious clearness as she sat smoking cigarettes before this dying fire, all forgetful of her aching tiredness, that never again, whatever frightful blows her destiny might have in store for her, could she be hurt as she had been hurt at Brandenstein on that cold and frosty day, so long ago, when she had stood at the French windows, a letter crumpled in her hand, to watch the snow birds of Brandenstein wheel wildly in the air, battling with all their strength toward the milder breezes of the South.



For on that day, so many years ago, something vital and ardent, something that was intensely a part of herself, had snapped, breaking irrevocably, so that never again could it be brought to life. And that was why, although these incidents belonged to a past grown utterly remote, this dreary, unprofitable reflection upon them invariably exhausted her, sapping even her prodigious and stubborn strength.
She yawned, tossing away her cigarette. A rehearsal was called for ten o'clock the next morning, and sleep, during this last American tour, had become for Varsovina a curiously elusive and exasperating phantom.
"Bed ... I must go to bed."
And yawning again, pushing away the locks of hair from her eyes, shuffling so wearily in her moccasin slippers that none would have recognized the greatest dancer in the world, she wandered into the next room, there to piaster her face with cold cream, seated at a dressing-table on which two half-burned candles smoked and guttered.
But her bed was a lonely bed, and she was a lonely woman, and she thought, as at last she sank down upon the smooth coolness of the sheets, that her goaded body seemed that night as though it must break in two from very weariness, rebelling finally and for ever against the strain that she had put upon it.



Chapter 39
And this, in fact, was exactly what happened a few weeks later, when the Varsovina Ballet was playing to capacity at Cleveland, Ohio. After dancing Paquerette, Lina fainted, and was unable to take her call; revived with brandy and sal volatile in her dressing-room, she flew into a rage and insisted, despite the entreaties of all present, upon dancing the next ballet, The Mountain Sprite. For Kessel, Weiss, Borek and Marie, her persistence was an ordeal that they would none of them forget as long as they lived. She danced with desperation, and with a carelessness apparent only to those possessed of technical knowledge; in the wings a doctor waited, watching her every movement apprehensively. She fainted again in her dressing-room after the performance.
The doctor was emphatic in his orders.
Rest.
Varsovina must rest. Otherwise, in view of the terrific strain to which she had for so many years subjected herself, he saw no reason to suppose that she could avoid a severe nervous breakdown. She must rest, he said, for at least six weeks; she must seek the sea, fresh air and sunshine; she must avoid, during this period of time, all discussion of the ballet, and of her business mattere. She must repose, not only her exhausted body, but also her restless, over-active brain.
Varsovina, wrapped in the gray woolen dressing-gown, eyed this very earnest and skilful young man ironically, and with extreme dislike.
"Doctor, you annoy me. I don't propose to cancel
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my American tour—I have too much at stake. When I return to France, I will rest, yes, and perhaps take a villa in Italy for a month or so. But while I am in America, I shall continue to work. That is what I am here for."
"But I teil you, Madame Varsovina "
"And you are here," she interrupted, "to give me such drugs and medicine as will enable me to dance for the remaining five weeks of this tour. I shall dance only in one ballet a night, and that, heaven knows! is sacrifice enough. You will give me sleeping drafts, so that I shall rest at night, and tonics, to make me stronger."
"I can not give my consent," said the young doctor stiffly, "to any such folly."
The next morning, when he called to visit his patiënt, he was informed, satirically enough, that Madame Varsovina was feeling too ill to receive the doctor. But that night she danced again.
And it is to be presumed that she subsequently discovered some less conscientious physician, for it is quite certain that she fulfilled her American engagements to the extent of dancing nightly in one ballet. The members of her company began to whisper that she was taking drugs, but of this there is no proof; to her troupe she was always an exotic, a sinister and solitary figure.
When the tour was over it was supposed that she would immediately collapse, but she did no such thing. She certainly took to her bed directly she set foot upon the ship that was bound for France, but she seemed in better health, for she slept many hours, drank quantities of milk, and apparently derived much benefit from the salty freshness of the sea air that flowed into her cabin, night and day, from an open porthole. On the last day of their voyage she sent for Kessel, who, following his usual custom when at sea, had been violently sick, with mechanical precision, three times every day. It was indeed



said by irreverent members of the troupe that the Captain set his watch by these periodic indispositions. Kessel arrived in Varsovina's cabin looking puffish and pasty, and much as though he had shrunk, since leaving New York.
Lina, propped up in bed, her sleek hair neatly braided, a rosy shawl about her shoulders, a pearly glow of powder on her thin cheeks, looked well, and knew it; she smiled at him satirically.
"Any one would imagine, my dear Kessel, that you, not I, were the invalid of the party."
"You know," said he, "that I am a wretched sailor. But you are blooming, my dear. I hope "
"Sit down," she said, "I want to talk to you. I want to discuss my plans."
"I am at your disposal."
"First of all," she began, amiably enough, "I would be glad to know what, in you opinion, caused my illness the other day?"
This was an easy question to deal with.
"Overwork, of course," replied Kessel accordingly.
"Oh, overwork!" she made an impatient gesture. "Overwork has, in your own private opinion, little or nothing to do with it. You know very well that I've overworked all my life, and am accustomed to it. No. I know you very well, my friend, by this time, and I flatter myself that at last I can see into your utterly detestable mind. You think that I am growing old."
"Now, my dear Lina, I implore you not to create a scene! What right have you "
"Please," she said, "don't interrupt me. I want this matter settled, once and for all. How old do you think I am?"
"The Snow Bird," said Kessel unctuously, "is ageless. The Ondine, the Mountain Sprite "



"Kessel, how old do you think 1 am?"
Kessel, who enjoyed making scenes more than he enjoyed anything else in life except perhaps the dancing of Varsovina, feit, at the moment, after so much persistent nausea, in no condition whatsoever to make one. He therefore asked helplessly:
"I have no idea. How old are you?"
"Ah-ha! At last you have asked me a simple question, and you shall have a simple answer!"
She snuggled beneath her rose-colored shawl, lighted a cigarette, and said:
"I am thirty-seven. That, as God is my judge, is the truth. You are wrong. I am not ageless. I have an age. And I am still, comparatively speaking, a young woman."
Directly she had spoken, she knew that she had made a mistake. He did not believe, nor ever would believe, that she had for once told him the truth; it was certain, now, that he thought her over forty. She looked at him defiantly.
"You see me tired," she said, "and sick, and lonely, and discouraged. But you know that I am not always so. And I repeat—I am thirty-seven. Paul was born when I was a young girl. That, however, is not the point. The point is that I am thirty-seven, and that I can dance as brilliantly as ever for another seven years, if I take care of myself."
"Why," Kessel inquired, "are you telling me all this, Lina?"
"Because," she said dryly, "I know very well, as I said before, exactly what is at the back of your mind. You are thinking that I am finished, that there is nothing left of me, only the name of Varsovina. You are thinking that when I appear in Italy, in two months' time, it would be as well to engage some young ballerina from



the Scala to dance my most exacting röles, and you are thinking that if I am careful—oh! very, very careful— you will be able to save Varsovina for a few more years, so long as she only dances three or four times a week, so long as she gives her name to some wretched, thirdrate, shabby ballet from which you, using that name, will as usual make money!"
Kessel, slightly taken aback by her perspicacity, for some such thoughts had indeed been forming in his brain, stared at her for a moment in silence, moistening his lips with his tongue. It was idle to pretend that his recovery was in any way complete enough for him to take his usual active part in this encounter; even while he gazed at her, helplessly, the ship gave a slight detestable lurch. She continued, unmoved:
"And to think that once I sacrifïced my dear Heinrich, the very soul of tact and generosity, for a creature so utterly vile and mercenary as yourself! I must have been mad! In any case, let there be no more plotting behind my back, do you understand? And we shall see, when I dance in Italy, after a few weeks' rest, whether or not I shall need to save myself! And now you had better go away and rest; you look to me exceedingly unwell."
Kessel stumbled very readily from the presence.
In another part of the ship, herded together in the little kennels that were third-class cabins, members of the corps de ballet discussed with the greatest animation all possible details of Varsovina's age and illness. They were mostly French and Italian girls with no education but with vivid imaginations; they whispered deliciously together, sucked sweets and giggled unceasingly.
Sometimes Weiss, who was exceedingly kind to them all, and who was known to them as Papa Weiss, came down to visit them on their dark dirty deck, and brought them fruit and chocolate, and wished secretly that Var-



sovina were not so economical where the traveling expenses of the troupe were concerned. But when the little coryphées rolled their dark eyes at him and tried to insinuate that Lina's illness was due to the fact that she had grown too old to dance strenuously, Weiss, the very soul of loyalty, flew into a temper, and threatened to box their ears. Whereupon they scattered like rabbits, still giggling, with shrill cries of "Mamma mia!" But he continued, still solemn:
"I have known Madame since she was a young girl, younger perhaps than some of you children. I was her musical director when first she toured America. You must permit me to teil you that this sort of gossip is not only silly and disrespectful, but also untrue."
Borek spent the voyage lying on his bunk, smoking cigarettes and staring up at the ceiling. Sometimes he yawned, arching his body as he stretched himself like a sleepy animal, and then, as his chest expanded and great muscles rippled over his back and shoulders, he smiled, thinking to himself that it was splendid to be young and strong, and that for his part he was well content with life, and all that life had given him. And then he would fall asleep, still smiling, looking not unlike a lazy faun.
And the great ship, grandly unperturbed by these tiny curious creatures swarming her decks, continued to steam steadily in the direction of France.



Chapter 40
Lina concluded her business arrangements in Paris and left almost immediately for the villa that she had taken near Mentone. She found a low pleasant house, sugarwhite, with green shutters, a tangle of creepers, and a long veranda overlooking an overgrown garden in which mimosa, camellia-trees and prickly pear clustered wild and unrestrained, casting a somber shadow, so that the sun's rays were sometimes obscured. But on the veranda there was sun, and here Lina lay, very slight and tiny in her heap of cushions, and opened a yellow parasol, and shut her eyes, trying to rest, while fleet shy lizards fled across the paving stones at her very feet, all unconscious of her presence. And she, with her swift dark head, her jewel-bright eyes, most curiously resembled these same lizards, but there was no one to teil her so, save Marie, and the servants hired with the villa, and none of these would have dared to take such a liberty. To these servants she was Madame, the great dancer, a creature more to be propitiated than an idol of precious jade.
But she did not really want to be propitiated; she only wanted to be left alone and in peace, to brood and sleep and dream as much as she desired, rested, idle, unmolested. And so she lay for hours among her cushions, while bright flecks of sunlight flitted like goldfish in the green ocean-tangle of the trees and shrubs that formed her garden, and flowers ran wild, like gipsies, and a dove murmured from the blackness of the somber cypress tree that was garlanded, as are Spanish saints, with wreaths of gay and climbing roses.
The charming disorder of the garden delighted her, be-
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cause it seemed a shut-in fairy world, a strange beautiful overgrown place, the wild and secret kingdom of the Sleeping Beauty, and it would not have astonished her— who had been reared in so many sham enchantments of the theater—to glimpse at any moment, peeping from the depths of leafy fortresses, sliding from the waters of ferngrown pools, that eerie company of nixies, dryads, giants, and gnomes, in which, for so many thousand people all over the world, Varsovina, that strange creature of spells and moonbeams, had her true existence.
At night, after her brief dinner, she went again to the veranda, and then frogs croaked, and trees rustled, and a solitary owl cried, and then at once all her wild enchanted garden looked as though it were frozen beneath the argent radiance of the moon.
At night, too, it was her custom to read The Times, a newspaper which for many years now had formed a part of her daily existence. Sometimes, very rarely, she was rewarded, for poring over this periodical, by some mention, however casual, of Lord Rochdale's name; she had learned, for instance, through this trusted medium, that he had married, about three years after her Brandenstein escapade, the daughter of a fellow peer, the Earl of Faversham. She knew that they had two children, a boy and a girl. She knew that they lived mostly at Chevis, where Guy was a magistrate and Master of Fox Hounds; she knew that every summer, during the months of June and July, he came with his wife to live at their house in Berkeley Square, there to spend the London season. So much she knew, and no more. Of a life so utterly remote from her own she understood nothing and could imagine little; her scraps of knowledge, sparse and non-committal, collected at such irregular intervals from a medium so supremely aloof as the impersonal columns of this English newspaper, only tormented her, because



they told her less than nothing. Justice of the Peace, Gentleman-in-Waiting, political secret.ary to some statesman of whom she had never even heard,— these fragmentary, infrequent records of his life brought no vivid picture to console her mind, evoked no living image to warm her heart; instead, she could only visualize the Guy she had known so long ago at Fontainebleau, the gay and ardent lover of that joyous springtime, and then she seemed to see him, still in all the glamour of his golden youth, dressed in some splendid unfamiliar uniform, moving a little stiffly across a stage crowded with the older graver figures of those English political and aristocratie personalities of whom she was so sadly ignorant.
Sometimes she dreamed of him thus, and then always when she woke her body was hungry for love, her cheeks wet with tears, and then she would lie motionless, surrendered, her lips still warm with sleep, pretending in a sort of desperation that he was near to kiss them, to comfort her and bring peace to the furious desolation raging in her heart. And then, thinking of the savage letter that she had received at Brandenstein on that gray day of snow and wind, she would assume once more the armor of cynicism that was her one protection against the ills of life, and realize with a profound feeling of detachment, that the pleasures of that smiling springtime were for ever finished and done with.
"Really," she said to herself at such times, "it does me no good to be idle. I should be dancing again."
And then Paul came from Louvain to stay with her for a fortnight. She was, as usual, anxious about this visit. They had not met for six months, and she was determined to try to make friends with him. He had asked her for money, and she had given him money. He was supposed to be studying law at Louvain University, and the reports that she had received of his progress were



mainly unfavorable. He was lazy, impertinent, unwilling to submit to authority. It was obvious that he was unpopular with his tutors, and of his comrades she knew nothing, only that they were few enough.
On the day of his arrival she took great pains with her appearance. She wanted, for reasons obscure even to herself, to dazzle him, to take him by surprise, to shock him into a sudden spontaneous admiration of her youthfulness. She wanted no doubt to reassure herself, and thus to know that her rest had benefited her; but she wanted something else too; to conquer her son, as she had conquered other men before him, to charm this hunchback, against his will, into loving the sylphide who was also his mother. And this desire, although she did not understand it, was born of her intense loneliness. She longed for Paul to be dependent on her for affection, sympathy, companionship. If she could not love him, and she did not believe that she could, she was at least determined to dominate him.
But she had forgotten Paul.
He was equally determined to reject her advances. If she were pleased to be compassionate, then it was his turn to show how palely cynical he could become. Her scenes of tenderness, played with so much beauty and restraint, left this critic unmoved, but stifling a yawn; every delicate, delicious artifice of charm, projected with a skill worthy of the actress Rachel, at once encountered an obstacle more to be dreaded than open hostility,— indifference. And yet he was not completely indifferent, for her anger pleased him, and whenever she lost her temper his narrow eyes sparkled, and then he would smile the little ironical smile that seemed to be his only maternal inheritance.
"He is a changeling," declared Marie, who hated him, "mais, c'est tout simple, was he not born near the forest,



where it is well known that the very trees have goblins imprisoned in their trunks?"
"You have seen too many ballets," Lina informed her dryly, but sometimes she was really inclined to agree with Marie, and she wished with all her heart that she could remember more about Nordstrom, who had never impressed her, during their association together, as a sinister man.
Paul liked to be alone. It was his custom, every day, to secrete himself in the wildness of the garden, wherever she was least likely to find him. He seemed to enjoy reading during meals, and when this luxury was forbidden him, he sulked. He played the piano—badly—and announced that he intended to write music. He painted, abominably, and when once, desirous of placating him, she admired some sketch or other, he smiled, oddly, looking at her out of the corner of his eyes. One day he showed her a portrait, the head of a youth. She studied it with a curious interest—a white, intent, red-lipped face, tired eyes, a mop of light hair.
"This is good. Who is he?"
"A friend of mine. You would not have heard of him."
"Your friend? You've never told me of your friends. Teil me about him."
"There is nothing to teil."
His voice was flat and bored.
"Suppose," she suggested, "that you ask him to stay here for a week or so? Surely it would'be more amusing for you?"
Again he looked at her with that darting sidelong glance, that ironical and rather superior smile.
"I think," said he, "that it would not be very amusing for my friend."
She was annoyed, and showed it.



"Perhaps it has not occurred to you," she told him, "that your friends might be interested in meeting me. You never realize, do you, that you are the son of a famous woman?"
"Oh, yes," Paul said smoothly, "I wouldn't have a crooked back, otherwise, would I?"
This was his obsession, his mania, over which he brooded with a sort of revengeful darkness. Had a hundred doctors assured him that his deformity was in no way due to his mother's dancing, he would not have believed them.
One day he said to her casually: "I don't want to continue at Louvain. I don't want to go on studying law."
"Then I would like to know what you propose doing with yourself?"
"Ah, I'll teil you, although doubtless you'11 throw cold water on my schemes—I want to learn something about the ballet."
She was so astonished that she could scarcely believe her ears. She sat up and stared at him with wide-open eyes. For a moment she was speechless. Then she said:
"What is this new idea? You have never taken the slightest interest in the ballet,—I don't suppose you have even seen me dance more than half a dozen times! And what exactly do you mean when you say that you want to learn something about the ballet? Learn what?"
"I was scarcely proposing," said he, "that I should take dancing lessons, if that is what you mean. No. But there are other ways in which I could make myself useful. At first, perhaps, I could act as secretary to your manager, or do other work of that kind. And then, all the time, I could be learning. . . . You see I paint a little, I compose a little, I have all kinds of half-formed ideas for costumes and scenery. You might find me of some value to you before very long."



"I am sorry, Paul," she said decisively, "but you must really dismiss this idea from your mind, and the sooner the better. I've not given you an expensive education in order that you shall spend the rest of your life fetching and carrying for Kessel, who already, by the way, has an extremely competent secretary of his own. Nor could I allow you to idle about the theater under the impression that one day, when you feit inclined, you would try to design costumes for one of my ballets. You see, Paul, such a state of affairs would not in the first place lead you anywhere, and in the second, it would not be suitable. As my son, you would start such work under a handicap. On all sides I should be accused of favoring you, if you made any success at all. Nor are you strong enough for a life of constant travel "
"Don't trouble," he interrupted, "to make any more excuses, mama. I know your real reason for refusing. I am too old, aren't I, to drag about at your heels all over the world? Too old, and too ugly. In fact, in no way a particularly desirable offspring for the Mountain Sprite to exhibit to her admirers. I expected you to say no. Very well, since I am financially dependent on you, I must obviously, at the moment, accept defeat. But don't imagine, that when I leave Louvain I have any intention of becoming an avocat. Not I. I shall paint, or compose, or do both, and one day, I repeat, I shall write a ballet."
She was cold with anger when he left her. The fact that he had correctly guessed the real motives for her refusal in no way consoled her. At that moment she hated him. She hated him so much that she passionately desired to hurt him as he had so often succeeded in hurting her, to lash him with her tongue, worst of all, to taunt him with his own deformity. Not only did she hate him, but she realized then, for the first time in her life, that she was afraid of him, had always been afraid of him, because



he was diseased in mind as he was diseased in body. He was wicked and malevolent. He, a creature conceived amid all the gaiety of those laughïng picnics beneath the chestnut blossom of Neuilly, he who had been born of parents so youthful, light-hearted and selfish, that they had only played at love, mating more carelessly than the birds above their heads, he who should therefore by all rights have been a shallow creature of mirth and sunlight, seemed to have been bewitched at birth, doomed to walk alone for the rest of his life down dark and sunless paths, sullen, grotesque, unloved.
She thought, not for the first time:
"If he had been Guy's son, whatever he had been, I would have adored him. He couldn't have done wrong. And I would never have been afraid of him."
But Paul had been born too soon, or too late, and that was his misfortune. Had he been Rosing's son she could have respected him. Had he been Guy's son, she would have worshiped him. But he was Nordstrom's son, and that meant nothing at all to her, for she had long ago forgotten Nordstrom.
And it was impossible to like Paul for himself.
Musing thus upon the character of her son, she returned to the house at twilight, leaving her garden still murmurous with the chirping of many grasshoppers. And it was not until the following day that she discovered, by chance, a savage caricature of herself lying upon a pile of Paul's drawings. She looked at it.
She was depicted as the Snow Bird, fighting, with all the strength of battered molting wings, the relentless figure of Time. Her own face, its every imperfection cruelly exaggerated, expressed only the most diabolical resentment; Time, smiling at her impotent despair, bar ring the way with his scythe, bore a strange resemblance to Kessel; behind this figure, applauding, not the dancer, but him



who mocked at her despair, peered forth the lineaments of the third Napoleon, his Empress, the Prince Imperial, Queen Victoria, the Kaiser,—every royal personage before whom she had ever danced. Even Eitel Gustav (depicted with straws in his hair) had his place somewhere in the background of this jeering array. Beneath the drawing was written:
Eheu fugaces Postume Postume |Labuntur anni. . . .
Lina continued to stare for several seconds at this production. Then she tore it into small pieces. She was ice-pale and her hands shook. She said aloud, defiantly, as though to reassure herself:
"And I am only thirty-seven!"
She never mentioned the caricature to Paul, nor he to her. She was too bitterly hurt, for in her son's conception of the present she could glimpse only the future—her future—and for a moment she recoiled in panic. Soon af ter this incident Paul returned to Louvain.
And then her garden was her own once more and she resumed her old life,—basking in the sun, meditating new ballets, perusing old copies of The Times, solitary and at peace.
But she dreamed more than once of Paul's drawing.



Chapter 41
It was spring in London and even in this tired and dusty city the air seemed fresh with the scent of the lilac that was soon to bloom. There was sun, and there were sparrows chirping from the eaves of buildings, and costers selling dafïodils and bluebells from barrows in the street. Punch and Judy jigged vivaciously in their tiny toy theater, Italian pedlers wandered the pavements with trays of piaster images, the Park was thronged with stately carriages, and already sheep grazed in flocks upon the green slopes of Kensington Gardens.
Across the Channel the guns, that had thundered so relentlessly, were still, for the siege of Paris was almost forgotten, after five long years; Sedan was seldom talked of; the Emperor of the French was dead; and his Empire, the playground of so many strange and bizarre figures, had crumbled like so much dust, so that these people, with all their noise and color and theatrical exuberance, existed only as a memory, thrust for ever from the limelight of their epoch, dead, forgotten, ruined, banished.
The only vivid figure of the period to survive was that of Varsovina the dancer.
She, who had coquetted with Morny, who had smoked cigarettes with the Emperor himself, who had kissed Eugénie's jeweled hand, fondled the baby Prince Imperial, she who had supped with Offenbach, who had so often entertained other, less reputable figures of the era,—Cora Pearl, Margot la Rigoleuse, Thérèse of the Alcazar,—she who had danced in theaters all blue and silver with the dazzling uniform of the Cent Gardes, now found herself, after the black disaster of the Franco-
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Prussian War, almost the sole survivor of that brilliant tragedy that had been the scene of her supreme triumphs.
She returned for two years to America, where she quarreled with the peaceful Borek, slapping his face in public at the Opera-House in New York when they were taking a curtain-call together, parted company with him, and continued her tour, undefeated.
The critics said of her that she was ageless, perennial, divine,—a legend of grace and beauty. She knew only that she grew daily thinner, more irritable, more exhausted, less able to endure the grinding hardships of these hurricane American tours. Nor was her new young partner, Duflos, of any real assistance when she was dancing with him,—on the contrary, his nervous inexperience communicating itself as it did to her, made her so mortally afraid of being dropped by him that she could have boxed his ears every day with the greatest possible satisfaction.
But she controlled herself, for if Duflos went there would be no one left to dance with her. This knowledge did not, however, prevent her from sulking during rehearsal; once, when she found Duflos waiting for her on the empty stage she suddenly pointed at him and burst out laughing.
"His legs! Why are they so thin? In a dancer it's ridiculous."
The youth, who was effeminate and dandified, flushed like a girl, but said nothing. Afterward, when he was with his comrades, he said much.
"Quelle vache, hein? En tout cas, je m'en fiche, moi.... She is finished, she has no spring left in her body . . . she needs a Strong Man, not a dancer, to support her nowadays."
But from the front all looked well, and not even the critics appeared to suspect that the Snowbird was drifting



before their eyes into the last decade of her glamourous reign. In any case, whatever may have been their private opinion, they united in singing the praises of an artist who, they insisted, must be for ever an exquisite, an ageless legend. Only Kessel, watching her from his box, watching that slim flying figure whirling in clouds of white tulle, Kessel, watching with narrowed eyes the lovely gracious movements of her thin arms, the shadow of her fleet winged feet, feit sometimes a constriction of the throat, and shook his head, for it seemed to him who knew her well that at last, after so long, the sylphide faltered in her flight.
"And as yet," he thought, "she doesn't know it herself. And I, who am probably younger than she is, have already three chins and a paunch. . . . Ces artistes!"
But Kessel was wrong, for Varsovina knew that her powers were waning. She had known ever since the departure of Borek. She, whose custom it had been to dance divinely when she was sick, or feverish, or coughing, or in pain, she who had once continued to dance— divinely—after having been stunned by the premature descent of a curtain, knew at last without being told that she could no longer fulfil the terrifically exacting röles of three ballets a night. Where eight years before she had known panic, she now was calm and resolute. Rest . . . sleep . . . these no longer meant salvation. She was forty-five, lean, strained, haggard, technically exquisite— and exhausted. On the stage, in all the sham enchantment of her graceful fairy-tales she appeared as a young girl. But without her make-up, without the radiance of theatrical lighting, without the kindly barrier of footlights, she at once became a pale, worn little creature with enormous, sunken eyes. No one now, but for her expensive, fashionable Parisian dresses, would ever have glanced at her as she passed in and out of the hotels where she went, as



had always been her custom, for sleep and food and nothing more; had it been possible, she would no doubt have preferred to live entirely in the theater.
She was ascetic as a nun. But her temper, her fits of nervous irritability, in no way resembled a nun, and these rages were dreaded by her troupe.
And yet, in New York, on the last night of her season, the acclamations that greeted the Snowbird were more hysterical than ever before. Nor was she allowed to drive back to her hotel in peace, for her admirers pulled the horses from the shafts of her brougham and themselves dragged her homeward with all the fanfare of a brass band, shouting, cheering, whooping with enthusiasm.
In the famous Russian sables, with a cluster of dark red roses clasped in her arms, she looked pale and fragile in the midst of so much hubbub. But for a moment she was the Varsovina of the past, the Varsovina of the rue d'Antin, for a moment she recaptured all the graceful glamour of her youth, and this was when, from the balcony of her hotel, she scattered roses to the crowd, and kissed her hands to them, and bowed as only she could bow, with a delicate and charming courtesy. She thought:
"It's like the night of my début—so many years ago— my début in Naples!"
And Kessel, watching, thought: "The last time. And she has no idea! The last time that such things will ever happen to her. If one could only teil her now, she might make more of it. . . . But one has a heart ... one can not be cruel to that point. . . ."
As was her custom, she ate her supper alone that night, with only Marie to share her triumph. She was weary but ecstatic.
And the next day she sailed for England with her troupe.
She reflected deeply during the course of this voyage,



and the result of these cogitations was that she sent for Kessel, as she had once, many years ago, sent for him in almost similar circumstances. But this time she was no longer defiant and on the defensive, no longer determined to prove to all the world that she was still young and strong and radiant. She had become cautious, and her caution was tinged with a resignation, a finality, that she had never before experienced.
Kessel had been wrong in supposing that she accepted the rapturous farewell of New York as a proof conclusive of her immortality. At the time this had been so; the theatrical fanfare of her farewell ovation had caught her in a mood at once excitable and melancholy, emotional and condescending. With the cold light of reflection had come the realization not only of her own waning power, but also a doubt as to her future financial potentialities as a dancer.
She had survived the Second Empire. In Paris, with casual cynicism, they thought her older than she was. In London, the public, she decided, was still prepared to accept her as immortal. With Borek as her partner, she would have been actually optimistic as to her likelihood of success in England, but Borek had gone, and she was tired, nervous, battered, apprehensive. But she still owned the Varsovina ballet, and she therefore announced pleasantly to Kessel:
"I shall rest myself during the English season. I have worked too hard of late. Nowadays they can't expect to buy with the name Varsovina my very life-blood— I'm not a slave!"
"Exactly," said Kessel.
"Exactly." And she was still very pleasant. She repeated: "I have worked too hard all my life. Harder, I imagine, than most women. And now, after so many years, I really don't see why I should be expected to dance



in two or three ballets every night. It seems to me that I am too valuable to kill myself in such a stupid fashion. . .
She paused, and Kessel murmured suave assent. She continued: "Therefore, in future, at any rate during the English season, I intend to dance only once a night. That means, of course, that we must engage a prima ballerina from Milan. What do you think of such a plan?"
Kessel knew very well indeed what he thought. It had come, at last. More astute, or perhaps more exhausted, than he supposed, she had been deceived only temporarily by the glamour of her farewell ovation. She knew, it seemed, that she could not long continue to remain supreme. Yet, while she relinquished her scepter, she yielded it gradually and with reluctance; she would continue to dance "once nightly," perhaps for many years, and indeed it suited his arrangements that she should do so. The Varsovina Ballet, without Varsovina, could only die; with Varsovina's waning strength carefully nursed it might endure for very long.
And he feit relieved to think that his star had at last consented to accept defeat. In fact, as he began to plan the future, he quite forgot that sentimental moment in New York when he had gazed, distressed, with dim eyes, upon the sylphide faltering for the fïrst time in her swift and lovely flight.
But now . . . a prima ballerina from Milan would undoubtedly solve many difficulties, and in his profession there was no place for sentiment.



Chapter 42
In the spring, then, when the Varsovina Ballet was beginning to rehearse at the Empress Theater, London, Carlotta Rosa came from Milan to join the troupe. There she had danced for two seasons, not as fïrst, but as second ballerina; she had given satisfaction, and would undoubtedly have been promoted during the following year, but she was twenty, and the idea of dancing abroad in the ballets that had made Varsovina famous, appealed to her far more than the idea of continuing indefinitely at the Scala.
She was so happy, at twenty, to bid farewell to Milan! She longed for London, Paris, America, bouquets, triumphs, and a smattering of Russian technique. Her profound admiration for Varsovina was tinged with discreet and secret pity for a star that, waning, was still glorious. She knew instinctively that Varsovina was at bay, desperate, resentful.
She thought, with a sigh: "La Poverina! To be as old as she is, most decidedly that can not be verv pleasant!"
And then she hummed an air from The Ondine, and forgot to pity Varsovina any more, for she could not, she said, for very long be sad. To escape from the Scala at twenty, to dance as second ballerina in Varsovina's troupe, to visit London in the springtime ... oh, no, most decidedly Carlotta Rosa could not for very long be sad!
On the day of her first rehearsal it seemed as though the entire corps de ballet held its breath, aghast, at the sacrilege of this young upstart who dared to mime, with so much coolness, Varsovina's röle in Paquerette. But Rosa,
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it seemed, had danced Paquerette before—with great success—and the fact that Varsovina, wrapped in the famous Russian sables, watched her impassively from a stage-box, apparently caused her not one single tremor.
When she had danced, and had bowed most respectfully, most delightfully, toward the stage-box, the coryphées and figurantes whispered to themselves that Madame would undoubtedly make some excuse for getting rid of her,— she was too accomplished, too sure of herself, "trop grande artiste." But Madame went forth upon the stage, embraced the young dancer with every demonstration of affection, and said to her in tones of unmistakable clearness:
"My child, you are charming, and I congratulate you . . . your teachers should indeed be very proud."
To which Rosa replied, modestly, confidingly: "Ah, Madame, you are my teacher now, and from you I have everything to learn—yes, I assure you, everything."
It was a pretty scene.
Rosa, thus contrasted with Varsovina's swart pallor, appeared fairer, more blooming, even than she was; taller than Lina, she was graceful, with a pleasing plumpness; her sunny skin and clear dark eyes made her vivid redgold hair seem all the brighter. Lina was little beside her, and white, and tired, but Lina was so exquisitely gracious that her courtesy became a grand thing, like a tribute of flowers, and it was Lina, of the two, who dominated.
Afterward, at the hotel, Marie, undressing her mistress, said affably:
"They teil me that Mademoiselle Carlotta Rosa disappoints in Paquerette. They teil me that she makes no impression whatsoever."
And Lina, somber, staring into the mirror as Marie brushed her hair:
"Then they teil you wrong. Rosa is excellent—better than I supposed."



"She has plenty of impudence, all the same," Marie pursued, "a young girl, fresh from the Milan school, prepared to make a fooi of herself dancing Madame's röles in public! What next, one asks oneself?"
"You have grown very gray, lately, Marie," Lina observed disconcertingly, as sole reply to this comment.
Marie said nothing, but diplomatically continued brushing.
Lina continued, after a pause: "It's many years, isn't it, since we sat together at a window to watch the Bruges carnival, and Monsieur de Beauvais threw comfits to us, and I wore my mulberry dress?"
"Certainly it is not yesterday," Marie agreed with an air of sapience.
And Lina murmured, almost to herself:
"C'est finie, la jeunesse ... and I have not made enough of it . . . but thank God that I can still dance ... I can still make even a Carlotta Rosa seem clumsy. . . ."
"Ah, Madame," cried Marie suddenly, inexplicably breaking the reserve of many years, "may I at last say that I shall never, as long as I live, cease regretting the departure of Monsieur Guy! Never, never, never!"
She stopped short, fearful, aghast at having, after so long, brought back to life that long forgotten name. It called forth so many memories—spring at Fontainebleau, the rue d'Antin, all the gaiety and glamour of the Second Empire. It was like shouting aloud, carelessly, the name of some one's sacred dead, and she trembled, dreading an outburst.
But Lina only said, very sweetly: "Mais enfin, Marie, what's the matter with you to-night? We mustn't live in the past, but in the present. And the name you mentioned belongs to the past. It is the same as talking of Bruges, and of Monsieur Rosing. All that is finished and done with. Don't be ridiculous!"



And Marie said no more.
Rehearsals continued at the Empress Theater in an atmosphere of delightful amiability regarded as highly unnatural by the people of the ballet, who were by this time more accustomed to storm than sunshine. Carlotta Rosa danced like an angel, and Lina, watching her intently, had nothing but praise for the exertions of the younger ballerina.
One morning Kessel was much astonished to find Borek waiting in his office. The Russian seemed chastened, and was shabbily dressed, the ballet that he had tried to start in America had, he admitted frankly, been nothing less than a fiasco for every one concerned. Plans? He had no plans, nothing at all, unless he returned to Russia; if Varsovina were by any chance willing for a reconciliation he for his part asked nothing better than to continue as her partner.
Lina was elated to hear of the prodigal's return. The mere thought of Borek, subjugated, penniless, returning voluntarily to the fold, was in itself gratifying, but the idea of dancing once more with the one man who knew by heart her every movement, who was familiar with every technical trick by which she might be exhibited to the best advantage, caused her heart to glow with pleasure, and indeed she almost feil upon his neck when they met to discuss the business aspect of his engagement.
Borek had developed from the uncouth boy, fresh from Russia, who had joined the troupe so many years ago, into a man of more than thirty, muscular as a panther, handsome in a Mongol fashion, confident of himself, desirous one day of making his name as a choreographist. He still smoked countless cigarettes, he was if anything more indolent of speech, more casual in manner, even than before.
She rehearsed a pas de deux with him and was enraptured by his swiftness, his sureness, by the technical dex-



terity of his movements. He appeared to her as a splendid machine, powerful, untiring, and with him she feit once again the self-confidence that had almost been destroyed by so many inexperienced and nervous partners.
He rehearsed with Rosa, and their first effort was by no means unsuccessful.
"What do you think of her?" Lina wanted to know afterward.
"Of Rosa? She is a pretty dancer." He added, after a pause: "She needs experience."
"She is very young," Lina reminded him lightly.
A few days later, as they ate sandwiches together in the theater, Carlotta Rosa asked Borek impulsively:
"Why did you quarrel with Madame in America?"
"She boxed my ears, when we took a call together."
"But why?"
"Because," Borek explained patiently, "I had flowers sent me that night, and she had none."
"Ah!" She understood perfectly this ballet tragedy, and said again, shaking her head, "La Poverina!"
Borek said nothing, but lighted a cigarette.
A few days before the first night Paul inexplicably arrived from Paris, and Lina's heart sank. Paul was supposed to have become an artist, and she paid the rent of his studio in addition to giving him an adequate allowance; as far as she knew, he had never yet sold a picture. In this respect, he reminded her of an old forgotten friend, Martens the painter of Bruges. In this respect and in no other.
She greeted him coldly: "What are you doing here?"
"I have come over for your first night."
"Is there no other reason for your presence in London?"
"I have brought a score that might interest you."
He was still, in spite of many failures, convinced that he could one day write a ballet.



"It's no use," she said, "as you very well know, showing your scores to me. I am not a musician. You must take them to Weiss."
"Weiss!" His voice was contemptuous. "Weiss is too old for his work. In any case he says what you teil him to say, and that of course is No. Why should I show my music to him?"
"Where are you staying?" she asked.
"Here. In this hotel."
"Indeed! I'm glad your means permit it."
"They don't, but yours do."
And he looked at her sardonically.
"Oh, Paul," she exclaimed, "teil me what you want, and have done! I know perfectly well, whenever you visit me, that you need something or other."
"You're intelligent," he sneered, "and as usual you have guessed right ... I need a hundred English pounds."
"So little!"
"Yes, to you."
She lost her temper, as he had calculated.
"Are you really, at your age, and with the allowance I give you, still quite unable to live within your means?"
"I imagine," said he, "that my father gave you an allowance once, didn't he? And in any case, you seem always to forget that I'm a cripple, although there's really no reason why you should, is there? YVhatever I do, wherever I go, my deformity is against me. People have a strange habit, I find, of supposing that because a man is a hunchback he must needs be an idiot into the bargain."
These arguments had long since ceased to affect her.
She said harshly: "Don't continue to talk such nonsense, because it doesn't impress me! You know very well that you have been gambling again."
"Perhaps," Paul agreed. "After all, it is one of the few amusements permitted me."



"If I give you this money will you swear to go back to Paris and not come near the theater?"
"Why should I keep away from the theater?"
"You know very well why. I have had enough scandals."
Their eyes met. Two serpents would have been more amicable.
"I agree," he said at length.
But as usual he broke his word and came down to the theater on the day before his return to Paris.
Lina was dancing a pas seul in the lavender tulle and bright shawl that had been for so many years her rehearsal costume. She was dancing to the orchestra, and Weiss, waving his baton, his white hair ruffled, followed with an almost passionate anxiety the movements of her flying feet. She was graceful, ecstatic, elegant—the smiling formal ballerina of a hundred old-fashioned prints. The music to which she danced, which was by Rossini, seemed to Paul old-fashioned too, and the romantic sweetness of its melodies aroused in him only a sensation of vague disgust. He continued to watch his mother, shading his eyes with his hand.
He watched her with apprehension. He had not seen her dance since her return from America, and his sharp eyes instantly perceived that a certain unique element was lacking from her performances,—the effortless, joyous quality of spacious movement which had once, long ago, so much electrified the maitres de ballet of Milan. But now there was something forced, as though she were straining herself to achieve effects that once came to her more naturally than song to the nightingale. Her technical resources were prodigious; a strange elusive grace still etherealized every movement, every glance, and yet... her pointes, so famous in two continents, no longer appeared as strong and hard as steel, and Paul, staring, feit



convinced that her toes were bleeding; he noticed once that she swore beneath her breath. He reflected moodily.
"Who knows whether or not she has saved money? _ If she hasn't, and is forced to retire, what a charming situation for me! I'll speak to Kessel. I'll insist at least that she look after herself during this English season! She must be mad, at her age, to work herself to death!"
Of the beauty, power and excitement that Lina's genius could still convey, he understood nothing. That was why, perhaps, he could not paint, nor write coherent music; both to Paul and to Kessel Lina was a hateful woman, but whereas to one she was also an exquisite inspiration, to the other she remained only a machine for grinding
money that he might spend.
When she had finished dancing Borek and Carlotta Rosa at once began to rehearse a pas de deux. Paul watched them casually. He detested Borek and found Rosa uninteresting, but the unspoiled freshness of her dancing seemed to him in ominous contrast to Lina's desperate, dazzling evolutions. He fidgeted in his seat, lighted a cigarette, and, turning, saw Duflos, once Varsovina's partner, dozing in a stall just behind him.
"Pierrot! Wake up! Are you not going to say bonjour
after so many months?"
The French boy started, rubbed his eyes, staring in
amazement at the hunchback.
"Paul? What are you doing here?"
"If you come to sit with me, I can easily teil you."
They began to whisper together, occasionally smother-
ing a laugh.
Borek suddenly stopped dancing and held up his hand. Rosa looked confused, and the music died away.
"What the devil is the matter now?" Lina called irritably from the wings, where Marie was engaged in massaging her feet.



Borek was protesting loudly.
"How can I dance when there is so much noise and laughter in front? It's impossible for me and not very easy for Mademoiselle Rosa!"
Chaos at once ensued, during the course of which Duflos was sworn at by every one, while Paul—"Madame's son"—sat at peace, quietly smoking his cigarette.
Lina asked suddenly, while Marie tied the ribbons of her shoes: "Paul is in front, isn't he?"
"I believe so, Madame."
"Oh, really, he is impossible! I forbade it!"
But she said no more, and allowed the dispute to continue without interference.
She was thinking dreamily, that in this theater, while they danced and squabbled on the stage, something more than a ballet rehearsal was taking place, something that she could not quite understand,—a drama, perhaps, since in this theater were collected together so many people who had played, and who were playing, important, diverse parts in the story of her own life. Kessel, Marie, Paul, Borek, Weiss, Carlotta Rosa, even Duflos, with his light hair and silly laugh. Paul and Borek, hating each other. Paul and Duflos, giggling in the stalls. Borek and Rosa, working so admirably together. Kessel, obsequious to her, falsely paternal in his manner toward Rosa. Weiss, who had been with her when Rosing died. Marie, impassive, chafing her mistress' sore feet with gentle hands.
They were all there, the people of her own world, collected haphazard and at intervals by herself, a vivid, incongruous, quarrelsome gathering. Only one figure was missing, she reflected vaguely, a vital splendid figure, that would have dwarfed the others. And that figure would always be missing.
The stage-manager came up to her.



"Excuse me, Madame, Monsieur Kessel would like to see you on a matter of great importance."
She answered mechanically: "Let him come to me, if he has anything to say."
Borek was dancing once more. His face was beaded with sweat. Beside him Rosa seemed cooler than a flower.
"She has no temperament," Lina thought dispassionately, "but when one is her age, and well trained into the bargain, and talented, what does that matter? Nothing. What do you want?" she inquired abruptly of Kessel.
Kessel, voluble with the expression of some obscure grievance or other, found her strangely inattentive.



Chapter 43
On first nights Lina was always in the theater by six o'clock. She saw no one at these times, but Marie, Kessel, Weiss and her stage-manager. She ate nothing, but drank quantities of coffee and, to calm her nerves, smoked an occasional cigarette. She wore the gray woolen dressinggown and took more than an hour to make up. It was at such times that she scrutinized her face frankly, impersonally, without either vanity or agitation, and worked upon it accordingly, employing quite dispassionately all the arts and experience of more than twenty years in the theater.
When she had finished she gazed with satisfaction upon a white creamy mask smoother than milk, upon heavy purple eyelids, eyelashes like spiders' legs, and a mouth more vivid than hibiscus flowers. From the front of the theater these artifices did much to foster the illusion of an elfin fragile youthfulness that was as much a part of Varsovina's box of tricks as were her exquisite pirouettes.
Now, under the new régime, she was not dancing until ten o'clock, but by seven she was ordering Marie to prepare the wet-white for her arms and shoulders.
Marie protested.
"There is so much time."
"Do as I teil you!" she retorted, stamping her foot. She was nervous, on edge. Marie obeyed without further argument.
"Is Rosa ready?" Lina wanted to know.
' I think that Mademoiselle Rosa has only just arrived in the theater."
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"Cette fille de marbre! Make haste, can't you, and then send for some more coffee."
A first night. As always, strange unknown people hastened about obscure business of their own, and the stone passages rang with their hurried tread.
"Is there an earthquake?" Lina asked peevishly.
"No, Madame, I am fairly certain that there isn't."
A knock at the door and Kessel came in, very splendid, over-dressed, a gardenia in his buttonhole.
"Ca va, hein?"
She made no reply, nor did he expect one.
"The Snow Bird, Lina! How they're longing for it."
"The brilliantine, Marie, for my hair ... oh, more than that, far more . . . that's better. Listen, Kessel, I want to teil you something."
"What has happened now, mon amie?"
"Oh, nothing has happened. It's only something that I did this afternoon. I want to teil some one about it."
"Yes?" he was politely attentive.
"I dismissed my carriage."
"Yes?"
"I sent for a cab. I had a strange fancy,—to see my old home. To return there as I left, in a cab. I drove out to Kennington. I asked for Mott Street. Nobody knew anything about it. But I remembered, and I directed the driver. We drove there."
"Well? But this is very romantic!"
"Oh, no." She was somber. "Wait until I've finished. We drove there, and there was no Mott Street. Nothing, nothing. All the houses have been pulled down, to make way for a railroad. It made me feel that I had dreamed my childhood. I have never been there since, and now it's all gone. In a way I was glad, for it was not pretty, Mott Street. But somehow I feit exceedingly melancholy."
"Ah, now, listen to me before you start being absurd,"



Kessel began placatingly, but there came a knock at the door and Marie came back with a gigantic basket of crimson and white carnations.
"More flowers! I shall take them all to the hospital tomorrow. Who sent these?"
"There's no card, Madame."
"Really, people are too stupid! Get me some more coffee."
"I am now going to encourage Rosa," Kessel informed her suavely, heaving himself out of his chair.
But Rosa, already dressed for Paquerette, showed no signs of requiring any encouragement.
"This is a great occasion for you, my dear mademoiselle," Kessel began pompously, for he was by no means sure that he approved of so much self-possession on first nights.
"Non e vero?" said Rosa happily. She began to polish her nails.
"Such responsibility," continued Kessel, eying her round white throat.
"Non e vero? But, after the Scala, one really minds nothing."
"Madame," pronounced Kessel ponderously, "is as nervous to-night as she was on the occasion of her début."
"La Poverina," commented Rosa, "and after so many years!"
In Lina's dressing-room Marie was inquiring anxiously whether her mistress intended watching Paquerette from the wings.
"No," said Lina.
"But, Madame "
"I shall leave the door open. Then I shall know how it goes."
"I am really sorry," Marie ventured, "for the poor Carlotta Rosa."



"You need not be," said Lina dryly. She repeated, half to herself, "C'est une fille de marbre!"
She lighted a cigarette.
Another knock at the door.
"Will you see Monsieur Borek?" Marie wanted to know.
"Of course. For a moment."
Borek came into the room, also dressed for Paquerette.
"Lina Varsovina, what flowers! They are magnificent!"
"The English are always faithful to their favorites."
"We will dance divinely to-night, won't we?"
"It is quite possible," Lina agreed, but her hand trembled.
"I am very happy to dance with you again," Borek declared courteously.
"It is agreeable," she agreed. She asked casually: "Has Rosa many flowers?"
"I have no idea." He added, after a pause, "I imagine not."
There was a silence.
"You had better be going," she said.
"Yes, I haven't much time. Bonne chance, Lina Varsovina !"
"Bonne chance!"
She was left alone with Marie. There was another, longer silence.
"Open the door wider, Marie."
Marie obeyed.
"How strange," she said suddenly, "not to be dancing in the first ballet 1"
"It seems strange also to me."
"I am a fooi," Lina declared suddenly, with a growing sense of panic. "Look at me—I'm perfectly strong and well! As though I couldn't dance Paquerette to-night! What have I let them do to me?"



"Madame, I entreat "
"What have I let them do to me?" Lina repeated in a louder voice. She sprang suddenly to her feet.
"Hush!" Marie exclaimed, and both women became suddenly motionless. The overture to Paquerette had begun.
Lina stood silent, one hand clenching the back of a chair. Marie was nervous, and crumpled her apron. They remained thus for a long time.
"Now," Lina whispered suddenly, "listen—it's the pas de deux!"
"Je sais! Mais voyons, je le sais biert!"
"Be quiet!"
It was odd to hear, from so far away, those strains of soft, alluring familiar music. But soon the music crept into the room and wove itself about the room, about the two women who listened to it so attentively. The air was alive, throbbing, glowing, with Paquerette's music.
"The entrechats now," Lina said in a low voice, and then: "Now it's her arabesque. How long can she hold it?"
"Ca y est!" Marie breathed, inclining her head toward the door.
"Be quiet, I teil you!"
But soon, after Borek's pas seul, after the final dance together, there was no longer any need to be quiet, for the ballet was over.
As the last chord died away there was a moment of intense silence. This silence was almost immediately succeeded by a clamor of hearty applause.
"Ah-ha," said Lina to this, closing her eyes as though in relief, "they like it, they like Rosa. She has done well. A la bonne heure!"
The applause continued to rage. Lina advanced toward the door and stood listening upon the threshold. The en-



thusiasm in front, expressed so vociferously as to appear tremendous, now seemed if anything to increase in intensity.
"How many more calls?" Lina wanted to know, and then, in a sudden rage: "Why don't they come up here and teil me what is happening?"
But the applause continued.
Lina turned to Marie. She said again: "What have I let them do to me?"
And then she slammed the door and sat down at her dressing-table, her head buried in her hands.
"Madame, Madame, I beseech you! In a moment every one will be up-stairs."
"Leave me alone!"
"But, Madame, it's her London début, and English audiences are proverbially kind!"
At this unfortunate moment Kessel saw fit to burst into the room. He was perspiring and jubilant, his hands shook. He was prepared to rejoice most heartily, for had not Rosa justified herself a thousand times over? And then he saw Lina crouched at her dressing-table, and in one moment he knew what was amiss. His face changed immediately.
"Lina, what an audience! My dear friend, if you could but know how impatiently they are waiting for the Snow Bird! And, Rosa . . he paused, moistened his lips, and achieved, "really, Rosa is better than we either of us supposed!"
Lina said nothing.
He continued, awkwardly: "May I bring her in? She is so anxious, so exceedingly anxious, for your approval. ..."
Lina turned round in her chair and said to him casually: "I shan't dance to-night."
"What is that you say?"



"You heard! I shan't dance to-night. The prodigious Rosa understudies me in Snowbird. This is her great opportunity."
Kessel gaped at her. "Are you a madwoman?"
"No. Only very sane. After that ovation, how can I dance?"
A dark flush swept Kessel's face.
"So you are jealous, Lina Varsovina?"
"Perhaps," she said indifïerently.
"Jealous! Of Carlotta Rosa! Of a little ballerina from Milan!"
"Oh, no, of a very fine ballerina from Milan! Rosa is excellent to-night. And she might be my daughter. I am Varsovina. Why should I risk unfavorable comparison with this young girl! I teil you, I shall not dance to-night. I shall take off my make-up, return home and go to bed."
"I forbid you," Kessel roared, and then there came a knock at the door. Marie came back with a letter.
"From the front, Madame, and it has 'Urgent' on the envelope."
Lina took the note mechanically and went on talking while she crumpled it in her nervous hand.
"If you speak to me so insolently, Kessel, you will leave my room immediately. I refuse to be dictated to. My reputation is too great to be injured at this stage of my career. I am Varsovina, and I am no longer young. I have my own interests to safeguard. Rosa is too accomplished, too young, too pretty, if you like, to dance before I dance. I have been a fooi to allow it. Now I am a fooi no longer."
She flung open her palm, as though to toss away her letter. And then her attention suddenly fastened itself upon this piece of paper. She unfolded it, read it once, twice, three times. She became absorbed, withdrawn. Kessel, raging, swearing in several languages, paced up



and down the room, but she took no notice of him.
"Do you hear me," he shouted.
But Lina, staring at her letter, remained transfixed, as though spellbound.
"Lina Varsovina, will you listen to what I am saying?"
"Marie!"
"Madame?"
"Marie, Marie! Look, look! Oh, read this and say that I am not dreaming! Say that you read what I read! Quickly, quickly!"
Kessel was mystified. He stopped blustering and stared at the two women.
Marie, frowning, read the letter with difficulty, mouthing its words to herself. As she often said, she was no scholar. And then, to Kessel's disgusted astonishment, Marie threw her apron over her head and began to whimper.
"Madame!"
"It's true, isn't it, Marie? It's real!"
"It is most certainly his writing!"
Kessel, still gaping, discovered to his bewilderment that Varsovina now looked young, eager, radiant.
"Lina Varsovina!"
She turned to him. "I shall dance! Oh, yes, I shall dance! Fetch Rosa! Quickly! The poor Rosa! How abominable not to have congratulated her before!"
"But I don't "
"Fetch Rosa!"
When Rosa came into the room, still flushed and panting, Lina embraced her with all the pride and tenderness of a fond mother. She smiled, cooed congratulations and patted Rosa's glowing cheek.
"My dear child, what a triumph! I am so proud of you—I am enchanted! Wait! Wait one minute!"
She stretched toward her flowers, snatched a bouquet



of red roses, and thrust this tribute into Carlotta's hands.
"There! Take these as a souvenir of your great success to-night. And God bless you! Now go and repose yourself!"
Kessel wiped the sweat from his face. The room was very hot.
"Lina "
"Oh, go, go! I must take off my clothes! In a minute, in a very few minutes, you shall see me dance the Snow Bird as only I can. And afterward "
She broke off. There was a deep happy note in her voice that made it sound as though she were singing. She looked at his blank face and burst out laughing.
"Will you go?" she said. "Or must I put you out by force?"
Kessel went.
He decided that he would be the better for a drink.
But he shook his head and muttered to himself as he hastened down the winding passage, for he really thought as indeed was always the case on first nights, that he inhabited a world in which he alone was sane.



Chapter 44
She was dressed for The Snow Bird, and already, even in the intimacy of the little over-heated dressing-room, she had assumed, as she stood before her mirror, the unearthly personality with which she trans formed this famous ballet into something rich and strange, a lovely thing from fairy kingdoms.
She was small and fragile in the fluttering white feathers that seemed, through some alchemy or other, as though they grew upon her limbs in a veritable plumage, and were actually a part of herself. White wings bound the blackness of her hair and she was ice-pale and strangely beautiful. Her thin taut body was like the body of a greyhound in its suggestion of speed and grace. And she was calm now, she to whom first nights were a torment, so calm that her hands scarcely trembled. Marie stood waiting for her with a shawl over her arm. "Madame . . . it is time."
Lina replied, without turning round: "I can still read my letter once again."
And she read:
"I am here by myself. I sent you some carnations, but they had no card. I did not mean to write, but I found that I couldn't help sending you this note. I am going home, to the country, tomorrow. Will you have supper with me to-night? If you have any feeling left for me, love or hate or friendship, I entreat you to accept. Perhaps you have forgotten me—then refuse. Our lives are so different, our parting was so long ago, that you may have forgotten even my name. But to me,
326



here to-night, it is as though we parted yesterday, and I must see you once again before we go our separate ways. In case you still remember me, and on purpose to confuse you if you do not, I sign myself only
"Guy."
After Kessel had left her room, Lina, in a veritable fever of exaltation, lost no time in scribbling upon a piece of paper the words:
"I will meet you to-night. Anywhere and at any time. Wait for me outside the theater. I have a carriage. L. V."
"And the supper-party that is being given for the company to-night at the hotel?" Marie inquired.
"They can have supper without me. I shall be ill— tired—anything. And now hurry!"
The note had been sent to Lord Rochdale. Rosa had been congratulated. Kessel had been soothed. And now the curtain was ready to ring up on The Snow Bird.
"My shawl," said Lina. As she took it, she suddenly kissed Marie on both cheeks.
"The powder puff? Come, then."
The progress of Varsovina from her dressing-room to the stage assumed something of the character of a royal procession. Those strange, seedy-looking individuals whose sole purpose in life appears to be that of lurking with mysterious intent in the passages of theaters drew back at her approach, nudged one another and stared as though at the apparition of some ghostly queen. Stagehands stopped work to gape quite frankly at this great celebrity. The corps de ballet watched her inquisitively, anxious to ascertain whether or not her temper had been in any way affected by Rosa's success. But Lina was



328
indifferent, withdrawn, wrapped in some mystic dream of her own. When Borek, dressed in the trunks and tights of the Prince, came up to greet her she started, as though he were a stranger.
"Nervous, Lina Varsovina?"
"I am happy," she answered with that deep singing
note in her voice.
"You're beautiful!" said Borek, naïvely, surprised.
"I am happy," she repeated with assurance.
The overture. She rubbed her feet in a tray of resin, allowed Marie once more to dust her shoulders with powder, and then went to wait in her place in the wings. She was frowning now, intense, concentrated, counting the beats beneath her breath, clasping and unclasping her hands. Then came her cue and she was gone, like a bird
released from a cage.
A mighty thunder of spontaneous applause almost drowned the music. Then, in a moment, as she began to dance, the audience was intensely still, and to the watchers in the wings it was as though some gigantic monster held its breath. How would she fare after Rosa s seductive exhibition of youthful abandon? Would they guess that she was soon exhausted now and that her pointes were weak and that her pirouettes were by no means perfectly finished? Would Borek fail to conceal these defects? Or would the glamour of her personality, the individual grace of her movements, once more succeed in satisfying her followers?
They waited, tense and motionless.
Lina, her white feathers blown away from her body as though by the wind, now whirled across the stage in the Snow Bird's first ecstatic flight. She was at first absorbed in expressing the joy of life, of movement, of radiant, careless vitality; she was the bird of freedom soaring gladly from the snow-clouds of winter toward



the softer breezes of the south. As she continued to dance her frail body began to dominate all the vast stage, and at once became a thing of vivid potent beauty, an instrument with which to express all that was loveliest in a world where there might exist nothing ugly; it was as if a light burned bright in her body, and burning, helped to create the illusion that her flying feet had really ceased to touch the ground, for it was as if a magie fire bore her into the air, so that while she danced she was no longer mortal, but a fairy woman, most eerie, most disquieting to behold.
Borek, the hunting Prince, crouched in reeds, bow and arrow in his hand, watched her in amazement. He thought: "She has not danced like this for ten years." And then as she floated toward him he discovered that as she sped past in the whirling pas de bourré she was singing to herself, a queer, wordless, crooning song. And he feit guilty, as though he had heard some secret not meant for his ears.
His cue came, and they began their pas de deux. When he caught her she laughed, a gleeful laugh that came from somewhere deep in her throat. And she was once more thistledown in his arms. There was nothing of her at all; she might have melted like a snow-wreath and he would not have known that she had vanished.
He muttered once, honestly bewildered: "You are superb!"
Weiss, conducting, feit exactly as though he were following the dazzling movement of some bright, bewildering will-o'-the-wisp. As for Kessel, one can not wonder that he wept. And as he wept he said to himself again and again:
"The young Varsovina! She is here once more, the young Varsovina, and I am witnessing a miracle!"
Even Duflos, who loathed her with good reason, cried



excitedly to a comrade that Rosa, in comparison, seemed like some young peasant romping at a fair.
And in front all was still. Not a sound, not a cough. Not even the rustling of a program.
The moment came for the Prince to slay the Snow Bird. Borek, bounding in the air like some splendid animal, unleashed with a superb gesture the fatal arrow. And Lina, mortally wounded, fluttered, bewildered, dying, less tangible than a snowflake, expressed with every nerve in her body the futility of killing something wild, free and lovely. The death of the Snow Bird at once became a tragedy none the less poignant for all its tinsel glamour. Danced by Lina it symbolized the wanton, thoughtless murder of all beauty, joy and innocence. The Snow Bird was dead, and would never, now, escape from the cold winds of the north. As the Prince ran toward his prey he was stricken with remorse, but it was too late, for he had slain this creature that had never harmed him, and then the snow began to fall, and he knew that his grief was of no avail, and that it was time for him to return homeward to his castle beyond the forest.
Lina was trembling. The curtain rang down while wild applause swelled into a terrific crescendo, and Borek
helped her to her feet.
In the wings, as was her custom, she leaned on Marie's arm, panting, the sweat running into her eyes, while Mane dabbed her face with powder.
"Some water. . .
Marie had a glass all ready and brimming.
She emerged to take her call. Not once, but marry, many times. She was an expert at taking calls. Every gesture, every smile, every curtsy, was the very perfection of modest grace. They handed flowers to her—a mass of flowers, a bank of flowers—red roses, lilies, pink carnations, a life-size Snow Bird fashioned of white



gardenias. And while she smiled and bowed so graciously her heart was beating wildly as she tried in vain to distinguish one single face among so many hundred faces. She thought desperately:
"He's here and I can't see him! I can't find him! What's the matter with my eyes?"
But she had never been able to distinguish any one from the stage.
At last it was over, they played God Save the Queen and then she was free. But she was not really free, for they were all clustered about her—Kessel, and Borek, and Rosa, and Weiss, and her maitre de ballet, and the stage-manager, and a great number of other, more tedious, less important persons.
"You were stupendous . . . exquisite . . . a supreme triumph . . . your great genius . . . supper . . . champagne . . . celebrations . . . your arabesque . . . your pas de bourré . . . unparalleled. . . ."
She said in a small tired voice: "Please ... I can't see any one in my room. No one, no one. I have an appointment. Please let me go."
On the threshold of her door stood Marie, unyielding, barring the door. But outside in the passage there surged more people, more exasperating unknown people, people whose names, whose faces, she had entirely forgotten. She murmured, docile:
"Thank you ... thank you for your congratulations 
You are most amiable. But you must please excuse me. . . . I am so tired, so very tired, and I have an appointment, a most important appointment."
It was Marie who whisked her into the room and it was Marie who slammed the door upon the very face of an outraged Kessel. "But did you not hear what Madame said? She can receive no one. No one, voyons! She has an appointment."
And so after much turmoil, the two women were alone.



Chapter 45
"He waits!" Marie cried dramatically.
Lina, exhausted, was crumpled, panting, in her easy chair.
"Where? Where is be?"
"He is by this time in Madame's carriage. Outside the theater. I, myself, have arranged these details. I have indeed attended to everything," Marie declared boastfully.
"Ah!"
It was a sigh of ecstasy.
"You saw him?" Marie wanted to know.
"Of course not. I can never see any one. And I
tried so hard!"
"Madame, / saw him! From the wings. In a box. I saw him distinctly. I recognized him immediately. I tried to teil you, but it was not possible to make you hear in all that noise!"
Lina said slowly, raising her head: "You saw him? Are you sure? Unhook me."
"But I teil you I saw him! How could I make a mistake? He was alone in the box. It was the same Monsieur Guy. I recognized him immediately!"
The white feathers of the Snow Bird fluttered to the ground and she stood looking at her own lithe body, that gleamed in the mirror like polished ivory.
"Marie, I want to ask you something. Will you teil me the truth?"
"Assuredly!"
"Did—is he—does he seem much altered? Is he very different?"
332



Marie smiled triumphantly.
"It is the same Monsieur Guy! I repeat, I recognized him immediately! A little bigger, a little more broad, more important-looking, but otherwise the same. I had only to look at him to think at once of Fontainebleau. It is undoubtedly the same Monsieur Guy!"
"Thank God!" Lina murmured, and laughed to herself.
She looked once more at her body, her hard beautiful body, and said eagerly: "Get me some hot water, and make haste. I mustn't keep him waiting."
"He would wait for ever!" Marie pronounced, in the accents of the Delphic Oracle.
She returned with the hot water.
"How fortunate that Madame brought this exquisite dress down to the theater!"
They proceeded to examine the dress, a gorgeous affair of ivory satin, sprayed with apple-green leaves; it was of the latest fashion, and its lace, frothing at the breast and shoulders, was exceedingly old, and consequently priceless.
"What a coincidence!" exclaimed Lina suddenly, in an awestruck voice.
"A coincidence?"
"Most certainly. Long ago, when I first met Monsieur Guy, I wore a white dress trimmed with green. Surely you remember? The night that Monsieur de Beauvais brought Monsieur Guy to the rue d'Antin?"
"But of course I remember! It is indeed a coincidence. Et ga," Marie proceeded happily, "porte toujours le bonheur."
Lina had finished her ablutions during the course of this conversation. She wrapped herself in the famous gray woolen dressing-gown and sat down at the dressingtable to remove her make-up.



334
She continued, more to herself than to Marie, smearing her face in a mask of cold cream that muffled her voice:
"How well I remember that night! It might have been yesterday. I was unhappy, having heard for the first time that Paul was not like other children. . . . I sat at the piano trying to play my shadow dance from The Ondine, and I couldn't play it—I could never play it. And then Guy came in when I was still in a rage, and angry, and crying out that I would sell my piano, since I couldn't learn to play it."
She stopped short, remembering how he had come upon her so suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, like a light in the midst of great darkness.
"I gave him my key. I had never done that for any one before. I never have since. But I gave it to him at once, directly he asked me for it."
"There are some people," Marie agreed, smoothing out the famous dress, "that one can not possibly refuse. Monsieur Guy was—is—one. Always he could wind me about his little finger. And how often he made me die of laughing! Will Madame wear the pearls?"
"Yes."
"And the yellow diamond ring?"
"No. Not that! Put it away—I don't even want to see it."
And she shuddered, as though she glimpsed for a moment a barred window overlooking the waters of the Rhine. Eitel Gustav's jewel was at once replaced in its little satin-lined box.
"One day," Lina announced, "I shall sell that diamond. A madman's ring! In the past it has brought me bad luck. Give me a cloth to wipe my face."
Marie obeyed, and then produced from the cupboard a fine petticoat, stiff with lace, a chemise more delicate



than gossamer, and a pair of minute green satin shoes adorned with paste buckles. She murmured, half to herself:
"The ermine wrap . . . and then some flowers . . . which flowers, je me demande?"
There was no answer, and she repeated in a louder voice: "Which flowers? Some white carnations from Monsieur Guy's basket, or would Madame prefer this spray of gardenias?"
There was still no answer, and she turned round inquiringly. Lina, who had wiped her face, sat once more at her dressing-table. She was engaged in scrutinizing herself in the mirror.
"Marie!"
This, inexplicably, sounded like a cry of anguish.
"Madame?"
Another long silence.
"Madame, you must really hurry!" But Lina continued to stare as though distraught at her own reflection.
"Madame! Maïs dépêchez-vous!"
As she took not the slightest notice, Marie went across to her and put a hand on her shoulder.
"What's the matter? What's upsetting you?"
The silence was shattered then, for she shuddered beneath this friendly comforting touch, and put both hands before her eyes, and cried out, like a child that is frightened of the dark.
"Marie! Marie!"
"But what is it? For the love of heaven, what's the matter now?"
The answer came at last, in a low voice that was almost a whisper.
"Look at me. Just look,—in the mirror."
"But I do not understand!" Marie lamented.
"Look then, when I teil you."



They both looked.
"Well?" Marie inquired.
"If you still don't understand, you have not used your eyes."
"Mais enfin, qu'est-ce-qu'il y a?"
But Marie had seen in the mirror exactly what her mistress saw there—a gray pinched face with strange deep lines plowed in it, and eyes that stared wearily, rimmed with the black shadows of intense fatigue.
Therefore Marie said, after another pause, in tones of extreme and forced cheerfulness:
"But Madame looks exceedingly well! Is that the only trouble?"
"No," said Lina, very dryly, to this.
"Then what?"
She answered painfully, flushing with the effort of an agonizing confession: "Nothing new, perhaps. Only that I am an old woman. No doubt I should have seen it before."
"But what nonsense! And there's rouge, and powder. and the new lipsalve from Paris!"
"Indeed?"
Marie repeated, vaguely, aware of a sudden darkness that stirred, menacing in the air:
"Madame must really hurry!"
"No, I teil you!" And then in a tone of infïnite despair. "You must go down and send him away. I can't see him. How could I see him? I must have been mad to forget what I have become."
"Madame, you can't be serious?"
"Will you please go at once and give that message? It's only unkind to keep him waiting like this, all for nothing."
"But he will be demented! Monsieur Guy will be demented!"



"At least," Lina said, as though to herself, "this way he will keep certain illusions."
And two tears, like great drops of rain, splashed down her cheeks.
'"'But at all costs try the make-up!" Marie urged practically.
Lina cried out then, in a sudden fury of desolation:
"Of what use would that be to me? A little paint can't give me back twenty years. It can't make me young again, as I was when he saw me last. We've been pretending too long, Marie, both of us. We have been pretending that a little rouge, a little powder, makes me a girl again. It doesn't, it can't, it never could. On the stage, when I am dancing, I'm the same, or nearly the same as I was. And therefore now I must stay on the stage, and never come to life except when I am dancing."
"But Monsieur Guy!" Marie protested. "Of all people in the world he would surely understand? And you are being cruel to him, since he still loves you with all his heart!"
"It would be more cruel to show myself as I really am."
And she continued, speaking quietly, forgetting for once her temperament, her temper, all her caprices of a spoiled celebrity:
"My love for him is the happiest, the most perfect thing that I have known in all my life. And his love for me is much the same—I know that, I'm sure of it, in spite of everything. To meet again now, when we are both growing old, and have had bitter things happen to us would perhaps destroy for ever the memory of that happiness, and that's too big a price to pay for one short meeting between two elderly people ... we would have nothing in common, nothing even to talk about, but Fontainebleau, and what could we find to



say of that? Only that once we were young, and loved each other, and were parted. And then he would look at these lines in my face, and I should notice that he was stouter, and we should both try to understand why this parting so nearly killed us, once upon a time, and then we should soon find that we were sleepy, and say good-by, and secretly be glad to leave each other and go our different ways. And there would be no more happiness for either one of us, even in dreams, for our memories would seem ridiculous for ever afterward. No!" She shook her head and continued, with a sort of desperate energy: "Go when I teil you, Marie, and send him away. Please be quick, so that I can't change my
mind. Go now!"
"But what shall I say to him?" Marie beseeched.
"Teil him that I can't come. Just say that I send my love. And please be very quick."
When she was left alone in the dressing-room she flung a shawl over the mirror, so that she might no longer behold her ravaged face, and then she sat patiently, her hands folded in her lap, waiting until Marie returned,
"Well?"
"I told Monsieur."
Marie's tone was remote; it was apparent that they were friends no longer. Once again, Marie inferred, they had become respectively mistress and maid.
"Well?"
"Monsieur has gone away."
"Did he say nothing?"
"He said that he perfectly understood."
"Did he say nothing more?"
"No, Madame."
"Was he not even disappointed?"
Marie relented. She had, after all, received a handsome tip.



"Monsieur le Marquis seemed angry. Angry, and sad."
"Sad?"
"Yes, Madame," she relented further, and added: "Very sad."
There was a long pause.
"I shall go to bed directly I get back to the hotel," Lina announced. "I shall have my supper in bed. I am so tired that I can scarcely stand on my feet."
"Yes, Madame."
The evening was over. They were the last people left in the theater; it was the fireman, finally, who conducted the great Varsovina to her carriage, and a wind blew down the empty streets, that still were wet with the glisten of rain, and they were glad to seek the shelter of her brougham. Inside the brougham lingered the faint scent of a cigar, for it was there in this very carriage, that Lord Rochdale had waited in vain for his mistress.



Chapter 46
The Varsovina Ballet, according to the transport notions of the 'seventies, moved about the world with an almost incredible speed. The English season was rapidly followed by a Canadian tour, an American tour, and then, inevitably, by a short season in South America. Kessel had not accompanied the ballet across the Atlantic, but had sent a colleague to deputize for him, a certain Adolf Klein, whose dominant motive in managing the tour was based upon a complete capitulation to Varsovina's every wish. And Varsovina herself, dancing only once nightly, sparing herself, still engaged in resting her incredible body, seemed possessed of a furious, a diabolical energy which really threatened at times to drive her subordinates out
of their senses.
The big cities of South America were not only tolerable, but agreeable. It was later in the tour, when Lina decided to attack the smaller towns, that the discomfort of their lives increased until it became well-nigh unen-
durable.
Such a town was San Pablo.
Here the ballet apeared at the Opera-House, a tawdry, ramshackle theater, situated exactly opposite an equally tawdry cathedral. Between these two buildings was a public square, or plaza, where mule-carriages waited, and in the middle of the square a small untidy publicgarden, choked with giant ferns and with other, more obscure, tropical shrubs. Behind the public gardens lay the one hotel, a curious edifice apparently fashioned of pink cocoa-nut icing. This square itself was never quiet. It was the locality preferred above all others by the in-
340



habitants of San Pablo as an entirely suitable scene for all nocturnal dispute; its cobbles echoed, night and day, with the clatter of mules' feet and a jingle of bells from their harness; newspaper boys screamed there, as did sellers of water, and pedlers of nuts and sweets; beggars lamented, prostitutes squealed, and men, women and children all expectorated constantly and violently, apparently without one single moment's cessation.
San Pablo was furthermore perpetually bathed in a fiery and relentless heat. A damp, clinging, steamy heat, this, rising in a miasma from the jungles that surrounded this little, stagnant, sluttish town. And, with the heat, an invariable accompaniment of persistent and bloodthirsty mosquitoes. At night they droned so discontentedly about the nets that even had the nights been cooler it would still have been impossible to sleep.
Weiss, who was no longer young, frankly admitted that he looked upon San Pablo as an inferno.
"Never againl Not even for Varsovina. Never, never again!"
Borek, restless, sweating, wakeful, paced his balcony at night naked to the waist, smoked innumerable cigarettes and swore beneath his breath.
Rosa, an Italian from the north, soon began to wilt in this wet sticky heat, and occasionally wept, and grew whiter, more languid, every day.
The corps de ballet moaned, complained, and abused everybody in turn when they thought that no one was listening.
Only Lina, pale, composed, unruffled, seemed to flourish in the breathless furnace of the South American tour. San Pablo, to her comrades the ultimate horror, apparently affected her not at all.
After a first rehearsal at the little Opera-House, Rosa said to her, gasping:



"How can we dance here properly? Even without the heat it would be terrible,—the stage has the worst rake I've ever knownl"
Lina smiled then, and patted Rosa's cheek.
"Ma pauvre petite, you make me feel so old! When I toured this country at your age such a stage would have seemed like paradise! But we were not so spoiled in those days . . . perhaps ..."
Duflos, overhearing this conversation, said to Rosa afterward, sardonically: "She killed her husband in this country, when she was your age. It's common knowledge. Oh, she's a demon, that woman,—she doesn't even feel the heat like other people."
"She will kill us all."
"Madame," said Marie, one night, her honest perspiring face resembling nothing so much as a large tomato, this heat is worse than anything I have before experienced. How can Madame dance in such frightful conditions?"
"It is not the first time," Lina informed her, "and those who dislike it are free to go. For my part, I shall stay. I have never yet broken a contract."
She could not sleep herself at night, but that was nothing new; she had slept badly for the last six months. One night, exasperated at last by her tumbled bed, she got up, just before dawn, lighted a cigarette and wandered out on to the balcony, wearing only a nightgown of lace. The night was heavy, stifling; down in the square people still chattered, and bells jangled from the harness of the mules that continually shook themselves, goaded by the persistent onslaught of mosquitoes. She smoked for a moment in silence, looking down remotely upon these dark gesticulating figures.
Then she heard a sound near her and started. It was Borek, on the next-door balcony.
"Good morning, Lina Varsovina."



He spoke sardonically.
"Ah-ha! Were you proposing to serenade me?"
"Hardly." His voice was grim. He continued: "I suppose that, like me, you can't sleep. Therefore we both walk about half-naked, smoke cigarettes and long for the day to come."
"The day has nearly come."
This was true; it was possible for her to see him quite distinctly. He wore only a pair of trousers. His muscular chest was bare, and copper-dark, and gleaming with sweat.
"Tu ne te gênes pas," said she dryly, eying him with a singular expression.
"Nor you," Borek retorted, "you are no more dressed than I am."
This was true; her nightgown was diaphanous.
As he spoke the heat seemed to rise up and strike them like a solid wall of fire; she drew a deep breath and lighted another cigarette.
"After all," she said, "we are not strangers. We have known each other long enough, you and I."
"True," Borek agreed.
There was a long silence.
"It's impossible," Lina declared at last, in a fit of sudden petulance, "to talk to you."
"Why?"
"You're so stupid! Oh, you're so stupid!"
"What do you mean?"
"But look at you!"
"I have already looked many times," Borek explained, annoyed, "in the mirror. And I am handsome. More handsome without my clothes. When I dance "
"Oh, when you dance!" For some reason obscure to herself, she was unspeakably irritated by his complacency. "We're not talking of when you dance. For once,



Borek, just for once, I am talking of you as a man. And as a man you're stupid. You have no ideas. You meet me by chance, on a balcony, just before dawn, and you can find nothing better to talk about than your own good looks. Just imagine! To me, Varsovina!"
"What do you want me to talk about?" Borek asked crossly. He was suffering intensely from the heat, and he had not slept all night. He was, in fact, in no mood for paying compliments.
"It's of no importance!" she rebuked him majestically. "In a minute I shall go back to bed."
"Me too."
There was a silence.
"Look!" she said suddenly, "it's dawn. Look, over there, at the sky."
Borek looked, puffing at his cigarette.
The sky, that had a moment ago glowered purple dark, was now suffused with paler violet, streaked with rose, and barred with dusky gold. The stars were fainter; they were almost silver.
Borek was suddenly delighted by so much variety of
color.
"That's beautiful!" he cried, with real enthusiasm, "that's beautiful, like a ballet, eh?"
He leaned over the balcony, throwing back his dark head, inhaling with vigor the first brief fugitive freshness of the tropical day.
Lina looked at him, but said nothing.
"Isn't it beautiful?" he continued; and caught her arm, squeezing it impulsively.
She remained motionless.
"And in a moment," he reflected, "when the sun rises, it will all be gone, and we shall only suffer again in the
same devilish heat But now, for a moment, just for a
moment, it is like heaven . .



She disengaged herself gently.
"I shall go in, and sleep while it's still cool."
As he paid no attention she repeated this observation in a louder voice. At last he turned in her direction.
"You're wise. I shall do the same."
And seized by this idea, which appeared to him an excellent one, he disappeared immediately into his bedroom, dismissing her with a friendly wave of his hand.
Lina remained on the balcony until she had finished her cigarette. Then she retired, to creep once more beneath her white net curtains, and tried to sleep, but once again sleep eluded her, and it was not until broad daylight that she dozed.
This day, so prematurely begun, was destined to become for Borek an eventful one.
He spent the morning rehearsing Graziella with Carlotta Rosa. The steamy stifling heat, the awkward rake of the stage, both combined to produce in Rosa an unnatural listlessness, that made her an unresponsive partner. When Borek rebuked her, half-teasingly, she caught her lip between her little white teeth and made no answer. They finished the rehearsal and went immediately to change, panting, speechless, streaming with perspiration.
They met again by accident a little later, as both were leaving the stage-door.
"Are you feeling better?" Borek wanted to know.
"Better! Well, perhaps my breath is coming more easily, but that's about all. How can I feel better while I exist in a furnace?"
"Are you going to lunch at the hotel?"
"I would be sick," Rosa declared, "if I ate lunch. Yes sick. There!"
Borek eyed her thoughtfully.
She continued: "I come from the north. I was born and bred near Milan. I have lived there all my life.



It is not as though I were Sicilian or Neapolitan. I am
not accustomed to this heat."
They feil mechanically into step and began to cross the square. The sun blazed down upon them in a sheet
of white flame.
"Come and repose yourself for a moment, Borek suggested, "in the gardens here. They are cool, and one can
at least sit in the shade."
"Oh, if you like," Rosa shrugged, "anywhere, so long
as we 'don't stand about waiting to catch a sunstroke or fever."
They passed through the gate of the public gardens.



Chapter 47
In the gardens was a pool, with flies buzzing thick about its stagnant waters, but an apathetic fountain played there, babbling lazily, trying half-heartedly to create a wholly fictitious atmosphere of coolness and repose. At the edge of this pool, wreathed in a bower of moist, dripping, giant ferns, was situated a bench, and upon this bench Borek and Rosa took their seats, and sighed, and mopped their faces. Borek at once produced some sandwiches bundled together in a handkerchief.
"No, no, no!" said Rosa, pettishly, waving away the sandwiches.
"It is not good to fast," Borek told her, and began to eat. He added, as a special inducement, recollecting that his companion was Italian: "There is much garlic in these sandwiches."
Rosa shuddered.
"As you like," said Borek pacifically.
There was a pause.
"Perhaps one bite," said Rosa at length.
Borek grinned. "What a baby!"
Still grinning, he began to feed her, persisting gently, until she had at last swallowed two sandwiches. He then murmured, "fa y est!" and looked at her approvingly. She was pale and heavy-eyed, save for the brightness of her tumbled hair.
"That's better, isn't it?" he wanted to know.
Rosa suddenly began to cry.
Borek, continuing to stare, at once assumed the perplexed expression of one whose excellent motives have been most grossly misconstrued. He shrugged his
347



shoulders and lighted a cigarette. But his long Mongolian eyes never ceased their exploration of her face.
"Voyons, Carlotta, du courage!"
"I am unhappy!"
"But why?"
"I want to be back in Milan! I want my country, my comrades—everything! This terrible sun burns into my whole body. I can't dance, I can't eat, I can t sleep! "You have ambition!"
"Oh, yes! But this—this is more than I can stand. And Varsovina hates me. Yes, really she hates me! She is glad, when she sees me so weak and stupid. She s jealous. She would like to leave me behind in a hospital.
She "
"Carlotta, listen to me!"
He threw away his cigarette.
"What is it?"
He touched her cheek gently, turning her face toward his own.
"Carlotta, you are unhappy because you are lonely. Isn't that so? Well, you shall be lonely no longer." "No?"
She was doubtful; she looked at him helplessly, with tears still glistening upon her eyelashes.
"No?"
"No," said Borek fïrmly. He laughed.
"Carlotta, my little Carlotta, I love you very much, and I desire you with all my heart! You are so beautiful. You are a child. I love you. There! What do you say to that?"
And he smiled again, looking down at her with the vivid slanting eyes that made him so much resemble a
faun. .
"What do you say to that?" he repeated, putting his
arm about her waist.



"Non lo so," Rosa replied unhappily.
Borek's arm slid farther round her body; his embrace tightened, grasping her closer, so close that she could feel his heart beating. And still he smiled. He was sure, now, what he wanted. He wanted Rosa. His nights of insomnia, of restlessness, of fretting in the heat, had left him morose, unnerved and sullen; now, suddenly, this delightful girl, so bewildered, so confiding, so perplexed as to her precise status with the she-devil, Varsovina, appeared to him infinitely pathetic, strangely appealing. In a moment he decided that he loved her, wildly, tenderly, with a passion not unreasonably intensified by her own most innocent helplessness.
He urged: "Carlotta! I'll protect you, if you will only let me. Say 'I love you!' "
Rosa feit weaker than a child. The quivering heat of midday had risen up to smite her like a burning sword. And then the sun whipped her blood into fire, and she clung to Borek, and stopped crying, and gave him her mouth to kiss. Outside the gardens mules stamped, jingling their harness, and rough voices shouted, and a young boy, selling water, called across the square like a shrill angel, but Rosa heard none of these sounds, for she was engaged in telling Borek how much she loved him.
The sun had stripped away from them all restraint, all dignity, all outward tranquillity; the personalities of Borek, the Russian, and of Carlotta, the Italian from the North, were indeed both of them at that moment temporarily non-existent; the sun, having beaten down their powers of resistance, having thawed the coldness of which both had been so conscious, now flung them together as though they had spent their entire lives in craving for each other with ferocity.
Rosa, who had always boasted that she could never for



very long be sad, now burst out laughing and kissed her lover half a dozen times.
"What is it? Why are you laughing?"
"We have wasted so much time! Oh, how stupid we've been! All these months ... we could have been together! Were we mad?"
"You will make me happy now," Borek cried like a captive released, and laid his head for a moment upon her breast. He continued, kissing the palm of her hand: "I love you so much! We will both be happy together—just wait, and you'11 see. . . . And when we get back to Europe, perhaps we shall marry each other, and start a ballet of our own, and dance superbly. . . . Yes, it's quite likely that we shall get married!"
"Indeed?" Rosa teased, but her bright hair brushed his cheek, and her hand, the hand that he had kissed, was trembling.
He said presently: "You must go in now, and rest before the matinée."
"I could dance at this very moment," she said, "without resting for a moment."
"Never mind. You must rest, until it's cooler."
They kissed once more, and then went back, soberly enough, to the hotel. They had plenty of time; the matinée was not until five o'clock.
That evening Lina danced Barbe-Bleue with Borek. She danced adequately, as indeed she had danced during the entire tour; gracefully, competently, a little wearily, and quite without the Bacchic inspiration that had rendered her first night in London so unforgettable, so passionately beautiful. Dimly, uncomprehendingly, Borek had begun to realize that that particular first night had also been somehow in the nature of a farewell performance, a swan song. The farewell performance of the real Varsovina. He knew it to be the last tremendous



effort of an exhausted aging woman, and could not in the least imagine just what furious emotion had goaded her into a display at once so frenzied and so exquisite. Vaguely he supposed, when he thought about it at all, that Rosa's success had irritated her.
Now, after dancing Barbe-Bleue, she said to him casually:
"If we suffer from insomnia to-night, Borek, and once more pace our respective balconies, I invite you to share an iced drink with me in my room. It will be less lonely, more convivial, and we can smoke cigarettes, and gossip until we feel sleepy."
"Ah! To-night I can't."
"Why not?"
"I have a supper, with some cömrades, and I shall be late."
"What of it?"
"I teil you," Borek repeated obstinately, "I shall not be walking about on the balcony to-night. I shall be with comrades."
"What comrades?" Lina demanded.
"You are not acquainted with all my friends, Lina Varsovina."
"You have friends in San Pablo? That's exceedingly interesting! However, I invite you, and therefore you can quite simply make your excuses to these mysterious friends, whoever they may be."
"That's impossible."
"Indeed! I suppose you are chasing some woman?"
Her tone conveyed an immense, an inhuman disdain for the emotions of normal existence.
"I am busy to-night," Borek repeated.
"Duflos?" Lina sneered.
"Duflos?" He thought of Paul, and grew suddenly angry. "Duflos is not my friend."



"Have it your own way," Lina told him icily. "For my part I would never have imagined the cocottes of San Pablo to be possessed of such irresistible fascinations."
Borek was silent.
"Good night," she said coldly, at length, and turned away.
"Good night, Lina Varsovina."
In exactly two days' time every single member of the ballet with the exception of Lina herself knew that Rosa and Borek were passionately in love with each other. They made, in fact, no attempt to conceal the violent fascination they feit for each other. Their frankness was easy to understand; one was Slav, the other Latin, and neither had fallen in love before. Both, in the terrific heat of San Pablo, were tremendously, abnormally excitable. The sun, that had first delighted them with each other, soon succeeded in tearing from both their last instinct of reserve, and whereas in Paris they would probably have tried to keep their love secret, in San Pablo they were well content to flaunt it before the eyes
of all the world.
But Lina, from whom all that might possibly be supposed to irritate was carefully concealed by obsequious, officious underlings, knew only that Borek avoided her. The ballet had four more days to spend in San Pablo. And each day it seemed that the sun increased in scorching, devilish ferocity, so that perhaps they were none of them completely normal, these men and these women collected haphazard from Paris, and Russia, and Milan, and from other places where cold sane breezes occasionally
blow. . , . , ,
Lina had been dancing The Snow Bird. And she had danced, not with the haunting beauty of her London performance, but sulkily, saving herself, muttering abuse



at Borek, faltering in the pas de bourré, generally infuriating both her company and her orchestra by erratic, ill-tempered behavior. She was so great an artist that from the front these demonstrations passed unnoticed, but Borek and Weiss and the maitre de ballet were all in turn exasperated by her tantrums.
When the ballet was over and she had taken her call, she went at once to her dressing-room and slammed the door, as though she wished to be rid of them all. She was sullen, then, and would not answer when Marie spoke to her, but ten minutes later she apparently determined to make a scene with some one or other, for she flung on her dressing-gown and left the room without saying where she was going.
She was white, thin-lipped, blazing with exhausted rage. Her frantic feet carried her straight to Borek's dressingroom, and it was there, on the very threshold, that she halted, for the door of Borek's room was open, and inside the room she could hear the soft cajoling murmur of Carlotta Rosa's voice. Lina immediately ceased to be the great, the affronted, the magniücent Varsovina, and became at once nothing more or less than an exceedingly inquisitive woman. She peered curiously through the door, straight into Borek's mirror.
Rosa and Borek stood reflected together in full view of the intruder. Rosa was stretching on tiptoe toward her lover, and her arms were locked about his neck. He was bending toward her, smiling, confident, amorous. As Lina watched, they kissed, clinging together with a kind of clumsy joyous affection that showed only too clearly how intimate they had become. Then Borek laughed and ruffled Rosa's tawny hair. But Rosa was serious; she said in French, evidently resuming an argument:
"Mais ü ne faut pas! The more you give in to her the more impossible she will become! After all, you are



somebody, you! You are an artist, a very great artistl
Borek only laughed. Still laughing, he kissed her again, and then she shut her eyes, and he bent her head back so that her body curved and she would have fallen, had he not caught her, lifting her almost off her feet.
"Ti amo! Ti atno!" Rosa sighed, capitulating.
Then came the murmur of Borek's voice, soft, caressing, inaudible. Their two heads, the dark head and the tawny head, were very close together.
Lina left them. . .
She returned to her own room and permitted Marie to dress her in complete silence. Then, still m silence, she walked out of the stage-door and across the square
toward her hotel.
In the plaza men lounged and eyed her with a bold appraising stare, but they made no attempt to molest her. The males of San Pablo, a simple race much addicted to plumpness in the opposite sex, saw the great Varsoyma merely as a richly dressed, foreign woman, skinny, holloweyed, almost grotesque, from an amatory point of view.
Nor did Lina notice these men. She noticed nothing. She held her head high and walked on briskly toward the portals of the pink-sugar hotel.



C hapt er 48
She did not feel well. She could not understand what ailed her. She knew only that she should have been lashed into rage, whereas she was conscious only of a profound, an aching desolation. In the heat her brain seemed to reel. For so many years now she had regarded Borek as a machine, as a mechanical means of exploiting her own talents to the best possible advantage. And then, quite suddenly, for no particular reason, he had appeared to her as a man, and without in the least loving this man, she had wanted him to love her. She had determined that he should love her. She had failed. And where she had failed Rosa had succeeded.
This seemed to her the climax of all that was sorrowful and hateful and cruel. Rosa was a child,—young, gay, gifted, desirable. Rosa had everything before her, all her vivid life to live. She, Lina, had nothing to look forward to. She had no looks, no lover, no home, no interest in anything save the ballet. And soon, in a very few years' time, she would no longer be able to dance without making herself ridiculous. Perhaps already, that very night, she had made herself ridiculous, for most certainly she had danced abominably. The bleak specter of her future haunted her, so that she could not forget it, nor could she forget that in her loneliness she had turned to Borek, and had been repulsed.
This was the most devastating blow of all, for had Borek become her lover, she knew that the anguish which had racked her ever since that frightful night in London might have known a slight, an ephemeral consolation. She was no longer young; she could not, especially in the climate
355



of San Pablo, remain perpetually faithful to the memory of an increasingly remote ideal; she needed, most desperately, to hear from some one—any one that she was still desirable, still to be loved even for a little while.
She sat, in her thin nightgown, at the open window of her bedroom, fanning herself, endeavoring in vain to create an illusion of coolness. Closing her eyes, she tried once more to visualize Guy, but she could not succeed. In this primitive and tropical town, where the damp evil heat steamed as though from a witch's cauldron, breeding fever, and inertia, and madness, there was no place for her English lover, and all those qualities that had most endeared him to her—his youth, his devotion, his gallant gaiety, at once became the characteristics of one who was so intangible as to have no existence whatsoever outside her own brain. For the first time since she had known him, her memories could in no way evoke his presence; even the sweet pain of visualizing his face was abruptly denied to her; suddenly, inexplicably, she could not imagine what he looked like; she would not, she thought, have recognized him had he suddenly appeared to her in all the beauty of his young manhood. She knew only that he was tall and fair, and that he had loved her, and it was not enough.
For too long she had starved herself on romantic memories; now, in the dusty heat of this unspeakable town, she knew that memories were not enough, since even they had failed her, and so she longed with a sense of positive
rebellion for Rosa's lover.
Years ago, many, many years ago, she had discovered Borek, engaged him, praised him, trained him, trusted him. 'if any one had a claim upon him, assuredly that person was herself. But Borek had no desire to be claimed by Varsovina, and had made his reluctance for such diversions only too clear. Borek was fascinated by the



Italian girl, and at this point in Lina's reflections life really seemed to her utterly unbearable.
Her jealousy of Rosa, always dormant, now flamed into new and active life. At that moment she would have liked to cut Rosa's throat. She would have enjoyed hearing that Rosa had broken a leg, and could never dance again. At that moment she was a fiend, and her face was the mask of Medusa. And then, swiftly, her anger was dissipated by sorrow and self-pity.
She had just seen Borek and Rosa in each other's arms. She had spied upon them deliberately, hostile, furious, disappointed. And yet, in the midst of so much rage, she had not been blind to the beauty of their mutual passion. They were young and handsome and in love. Impossible to deny them beauty, impossible not to realize how fitting it was for two creatures so physically splendid to turn instinctively toward each other. And, realizing this, she pitied herself until she could have wept, for she had known also at that exact moment that there was no longer any place for her in the vivid intrigues of Borek's world. At this stage in her career a love-affair between them could only have brought ridicule on both.
And it occurred to her then, as she sat slowly moving her fan, still contemplating, as though in a trance, the sulky breathless night, that she only happened to be there, brooding at the open windows of an unspeakable hotel, buried in a horrible, unhealthy town, slaving in a feverridden and primitive country, because she had been unlucky enough to survive her epoch.
Her epoch, the Second Empire, had been for so long over and done with that even she herself could scarcely remember in what an atmosphere of reckless, riotous luxury she had for so long lived and laughed and feasted. She only knew that all the gaiety she had ever experienced seemed to have been concentrated upon this particular



period of her existence; she recollected, vaguely, a roistering city peopled by graceful women in crinolines and by beautiful young men in brilliant uniforms; in her imagination these people habitually laughed a great deal, drank quantities of champagne, and moved inevitably, in a romantic dreamy parade, to the music of waltzes from Vienna. The very cafés in which they had laughed and danced all night brought back to her tired mind memories of follies incredibly joyous—the Maison d'Or, the Café Anglais,—their bright lights were dimmed now, for like the snows of yesterday they had vanished with the crash of the Empire, vanishing when a brighter light than theirs had been for ever dimmed—the light, even then flickering, of the last Napoleon's sun.
But in the old days, supping in these cafés, Lina had been the personality above all others remarked, stared at, flattered, fawned upon. The whisper, "C'est Varsovina!" had always sufficed to put other women—Thérèsa, Cora Pearl, Marie Duplessis, Margot la Rigoleuse—temporarily in the shade. The Ondine, then, had reigned as queen; her word was law, her kingdom Paris. And now there was no Ondine, only the Snow Bird; and no Paris, only San Pablo. There was no laughter, no gaiety, there were no parties, no lovers. There was only the heat, and loneliness, and torment, and the Snow Bird was tired.
She wondered whether any one had ever been more tired than she was, and then she supposed that long, long ago, when she was still a child, dancing in this same country, Rosing, her husband, had suffered as she did. Perhaps, since he died, he had suffered more but she did not believe this. She had not thought of him for so many years that she had at first the greatest difficulty in separating him from his natural background, Bruges, but at last she was able to do so, able even to remember his gray aquiline face and tired cynical eyes.



Just before his death there had been a dispute. She had wished to dance in a bull-ring before some President or other, and he had protested with vehemence. The idea of Lina dancing in a plaza de toros had seemed to him monstrous, unthinkable. But she had persisted, thrusting aside his weary arguments with all the force of her young imperious will. And she had conquered. She had danced there in the sun-glare of a great arena, more lovely than a spray of plum-blossom; at the end of her performance she had been pelted with a rain of lilies and camellias, so that these flowers, tossed in thousands by her admirers, had bloomed in all their freshness where the day before blood had been spilled. And she had run back to her husband with her spoils heaped in her arms, and she had found her husband dead. He had for long been tired; she had for long been selfish; her youthful vitality had sapped his strength, and so he had died, this old man who had created Varsovina from nothing.
And it seemed to her now, in this mood of frustrated bitterness, that he had been uncommonly fortunate thus to escape. She supposed that with death he had found peace. Peace! The very word had a sweet strange music.
She determined there and then, at that precise moment, to kill herself, and this decision brought with it a blessed calm relief. How simple, after all, to solve the sorrowful problem of her existence; how simple, how comforting, just to fall asleep and slip away from a life so utterly detestable!
She got up from her chair and went inside the bedroom. She was no longer trembling and strained; she was quiet now, strangely reassured and tranquil.
She went across to her washstand and, taking up a tumbler, poured into it the whole contents of a bottle of sleeping draft. It was as simple as this, her passport to



perpetual sleep—so simple that she smiled. Why had
she waited so long?
Then, suddenly, she hesitated. She was not only a dancer, but also by instinct, a dramatic actress. Therefore it seemed to her only fitting that for this final farewell she should insure the discovery afterward, not of a corpse dressed in a nightgown, but of something more beautiful, more splendid. She determined that, in the morning, when she had escaped beyond recall from so much that was hateful, those who came in search of her should find not a woman, but the Ondine, the Snow Bird, the Sylphide, lying with pale wings for ever folded.
As she had lived, so would she die. Not as a human personality, but as the recognized symbol of spiritual,
exquisite grace.
She kept always with her in her private wardrobe, as a species of amulet, the Snow Bird costume in which she had danced before Guy on the first night of the London season. She found it now and dragged it from a drawer, scattering chemises and handkerchiefs in her haste to discover if it was still fit for her to wear, this garment
destined to be her shroud.
The inspection was satisfactory. She took off her nightgown and began to dress herself, calm, absorbed, staring into the mirror with somber eyes. She was so unused to waiting upon herself that it took her quite ten minutes to hook her bodice, but at last she gazed upon a reflection that she had seen before in the mirrors of a thousand different dressing-rooms.
The Snow Bird, facing her, stood poised as though for
flight.



Chapt er 49
A sheen of silken tights, drifts of white tulle, white wings binding the blackness of smooth hair, white plumage fluttering from the scanty bodice, that was all, and then that mysterious entity, the Snow Bird, had been created for the last time. Almost created, and yet not quite; she had still to powder her face, and darken her eyelids, and paint her mouth scarlet, like a red flower. She opened her jewel-case, found her pearls, kissed them, and put them away again; she had never danced in her pearls. They belonged, not to the ballerina, but to the woman, and she had no further use for them.
When she had completed her preparations she feit suddenly exhausted, drained of all strength, and for a moment she was on the point of fainting. She sat quite still for a short time and pressed her hands against her eyes; when she opened them once more she was able to stand up, but she was still strangely weak, and her head swam when she tried to walk. She persisted; found the glass of sleeping draft, and stumbled across the room to her bed. Here, very carefully, she placed the glass on a table beside the bed; so carefully that she spilled not one drop of this precious liquid that was to bring to her eternal forgetfulness. And then she lay down on the bed, crumpling her tulle and her feathers, bedraggling the Snow Bird's plumage, but she did not care, for at that moment a fire seemed to burn up her whole body and a violent pain racked her head, making her brain spin. She lay flat, closing her eyes, and feit a little better. She thought:
"In a moment, in one little moment, I shall not know what it feels like to be tired and giddy and to have pains
361



in my head I shall not know what it feels like to dance
when I can scarcely stand on my feet I shall not know
what it feels like to want Borek because I can not forget Guy. ... I shall never know what it feels like to be old. ... I shall only know what it is like to be at rest."
And she lay motionless in a delicious anticipation of the great peace that was within reach of her hand.
No more insults from Kessel, no more scenes with paul—she would never now see Paul again, and this single thought was bliss to her. Into her mind, even into her body, a great tranquillity flowed; already, in advance, she savored the supreme sweetness of eternal peace.
"I shall drink it now. ..."
She raised herself on her pillows; stretched forth her hand toward the glass. But even this slight movement caused her head to swim once more, so that she sighed, and shut her eyes again, and then, inexplicably, the passive calm of her mind was shattered by the intrusion of a hundred busy, vivid, inconsequential, maddening little thoughts that she could in no way control, for it was as though her brain had suddenly determined to play exasperating tricks upon her, and suddenly, for no apparent reason she had ceased to be the Snow Bird dying, and was nothing more or less than a sickly child postunng in the London Academy of Madame Vanessi's dancing school. She clenched her hands, rebelling, fighting in vain agamst this fearful, frightening inroad upon her peace, but her efforts were of no avail, for then she could think only of circus wagons trailing a dusty road, and of the juggier, her first lover, with his scarred and swarthy face. But soon he was no longer there, nor were his wagons, for she was dancing now triumphantly; it was her début; she was captivating all Naples, and Rosing, to commemorate her success, was buying her a ruby. And then she had quite forgotten Naples, for she was in Paris, laughing with her



lover Nordstrom; Rosing was dead, and it was Nordstrom who was buying her pearls. But Nordstrom was an ugly memory, since it was he who had given her a deformed child, and to forget him she turned wildly toward the young De Beauvais, with his gay parties, his picnics, his women and his flowers. But De Beauvais could not for long exist in her memory; inevitably he was obliterated by the more vivid, vital face of Guy, and then in her delirium she cried aloud, for the world had become dark, and she stretched out her hand for the draft that was to bring her peace, and groping, fumbled, so that there was a great shattering of glass and then she screamed again, and beat her hands upon the pillow, and cried aloud the name of her lover, like one who gives up the ghost.
And then it seemed to her that there came into the room some one bearing a candle, but she was exhausted by her feverish terrors and could cry out no more; she lay exhausted, her face streaming with sweat, and tried in vain to explain how terrible it was that she could not play her shadow dance, her own shadow dance from The Ondine, but her lips were dry, and no sound would come from them. She became aware, vaguely, of a huge face that bent over her; a vast face that loomed gradually nearer, so that she shuddered, and then the face seemed to vanish in a red mist, and everything was black once more, and she was conscious only of a fire that spun and whirled in her brain, but she was too tired, too limp, to make any definite protest against this extraordinary phenomenon, and soon she slipped away into a complete and merciful oblivion of her surroundings. It was as though, Ondinelike, she slid beneath the cool darkness of deep waters, and knew no more.
"Madame! Madame!" Marie cried in alarm, and thrust her candle close to the ghastly pallor of her mistress' face. But Lina only sighed, stared with unseeing eyes, then re-



lapsed once more into unconsciousness. Marie gazed helplessly upon the tumbled feathers of the Snow Bird's plumage, and then upon the floor, where a glass lay smashed to atoms in a dark wet pool, and then at the open jewel-case, where the pearls and rubies and diamon s lay so carelessly, in a glittering untidy heap.
And then she ran to the door, calling for Weiss, and Klein, and for the night-porter. Her voice rang shriüy and queerly down the bare passages of the hotel, but she continued to call until she heard hurrying footsteps, and then she gave orders that a doctor, the best doctor in San Pablo, was to be fetched immediately, for Madame was
sick, very sick.
When she returned to her mistress bedside Lma lay quite still, and seemed less tangible than a snow-wreath; her lashes flickered, but she did not open her eyes; once she moved her hands, plucking at the counterpane, perhaps still thinking that she played the shadow dance on her piano at the rue d'Antin, but when Marie knelt beside her trying to rearrange her pillows she did not recognize
It seemed a long time before the doctor came, and long before his arrival Weiss and Klein had dressed themselves and come to stand and whisper anxiously at the door. The doctor took one look at her and said at once: "It's the fever, naturally. You must have known this town was full of it. Why will you Europeans come to
these parts of the world?" _
He was a young man, olive-skmned, with a short dark
beard and capable sensitive hands. He was honestly astonished when Weiss, to whom he had addressed these last words, answered sadly: "One must live."
"There's London, Paris, Rome. Why come to such a
place as this?" ,
It was obvious that he knew nothing of the dechne and



fall of Varsovina, and there was no time to explain these matters to him, for he changed the subject. He said:
"Has she any family?"
"She has a son. Is she then so ?"
"It would be as well to send him a message by telegraph. Yes, she is hopelessly ill. She was never in any condition to stand the climate out here—she's worn out, exhausted, and her heart is failing. It's the heart, in fact, that makes her case so grave. Had it not been for that she might possibly have recovered from the fever. I will send over a Sister from the hospital to nurse her."
But Varsovina did not require any prolonged services of this nature. It was as though, having determined to slip away from life, the will to do so persisted even in her delirium; she could scarcely wait to be free. She fretted for release.
She sank rapidly during the night, and was mostly unconscious. But there were occasional brief interludes of delirium. Once she imagined herself at Fontainebleau, and called for Guy to come and see the chestnut blossom with her. Then she was with Eitel Gustav in the pavilion of the royal castle at Brandenstein. And then, just before midday, she was a ballerina, moving her thin arms in the gestures of the Ondine or the Snow Bird. And thus her wish was realized, for soon after this interval her tired heart quietly ceased to beat, and it was as a dancer, not as a woman, that Varsovina died.
And the members of her company, even those who had hated her, were stunned, dismayed, awestruck like frightened children when they were told by Weiss that her life was ended. Their own world, they feit, was ended too; it was as though a great dark cloud had passed before the sun and dimmed the day.
Lina Varsovina died in 1876 at the town of San Pablo



in South America. She was accorded a public funeral and was buried in her Snow Bird's dress. The news of her death created a sensation of bereavement throughout the entire world, and it was agreed that a symbol of pure beauty had vanished for ever with her passing.
THE END