e visit of the princes to her dressing-room, and Queen
Amelie's gift, accompanied by such charming words. The evocation of
those glorious scenes intoxicated the poor Fairy, her eyes shone, they
could hear her little feet moving restlessly under the table as if
seized by a dancing frenzy. And, indeed, when the dinner was at an end
and they had returned to the studio, Constance began to pace back and
forth, to describe a dance-step or a pirouette, talking all the time,
interrupting herself to hum an air from some ballet to which she kept
time with her head, then suddenly gathered herself together and with one
leap was at the other end of the studio.

"Now she's off," whispered Felicia to de Gery. "Watch. It will be worth
your while, for you are about to see La Crenmitz dance."

It was a fascinating, fairy-like spectacle. Against the background of
the enormous room, drowned in shadow and hardly lighted save through the
round window from without, where the moon was climbing upward in a deep
blue sky, a typical operatic sky, the famous dancer's figure stood out
all white, a light, airy unsubstantial ghost, flying, rather than
springing, through the air; then, standing upon her slender toes, upheld
in the air by naught but her outstretched arms, her face raised in a
fleeting attitude in which nothing was visible but the smile, she came
quickly forward toward the light, or receded with little jerky steps, so
rapid that one constantly expected to hear the crash of glass and see
her glide backward up the slope of the broad moonbeam that shone aslant
into the studio. There was one fact that imparted a strange, poetic
charm to that fantastic ballet, and that was the absence of music, of
every other sound than that of the measured footfalls, whose effect was
heightened by the semi-darkness, of that quick, light patter no louder
than the fall of the petals from a dahlia, one by one. This lasted for
some minutes, then they could tell from the quickening of her breath
that she was becoming exhausted.

"Enough, enough! Sit down," said Felicia.

Thereupon the little white ghost lighted on the edge of an armchair and
sat there poised and ready to start anew, smiling and panting, until
sleep seized upon her, and began to sway and rock her softly to and fro
without disturbing her pretty attitude, like a dragon-fly on a willow
branch that drags in the water and moves with the current.

As they watched her nodding in the chair, Felicia s