d Elsie.

"Well, can't you see any difference between that fellow and your
Willie?"

"No, I can't."

"Fancy," said Jenny mockingly.

The Ballerina's final pose was being sustained amid loud applause. The
ballet-master began to count the steps for the final movement. The stage
manager's warning had sounded. The curtain fell, and eighty girls
hurried helter-skelter to their rooms in order to change for the last
scene.

"All down, ladies," cried the call-boy, and downstairs they trooped.

The curtain rose on Piccadilly Circus, gray and dripping. Somber figures
danced in a saraband of shadows to a yearning melody of Tschaikovsky.
The oboe gave its plaintive summons; like sea-birds calling, the rest of
the wood-wind took up the appeal until it died away in a solitary flute,
which sounded a joyful signal very sweet and low. A cymbal crashed: a
golden ray of light came slanting on to the stone figure of Cupid,
infusing him with life until, warm and radiant, he sprang from his
pedestal to bewitch the sad scene. Roses tumbled from the clouds; lilies
sprang up, quivering in the wind of dancing motion. A fountain gushed
from the abandoned pedestal; the scene was a furnace of color. The
Ballerinas led the _Corps de Ballet_ in a Bacchic procession round and
round the twirling form of Cupid. With noise of bell and cymbal, they
ran leaping through an enchanted Piccadilly seen in amber or cornelian.
They might have stepped from a canvas of Titian dyed by the sun of a
spent Venetian afternoon. Individual members of the audience began to
applaud, and the isolated hand-claps sounded like castanets, until, as
the dance became wilder, cheers floated on to the stage like the noise
of waves heard suddenly over the brow of a hill.

Jenny, in a tunic of ivory silk sprayed with tawny roses, her hair bound
with a fillet of gold, turned from the intoxication of the dance to
search the stalls. Across the _arpeggios_ of the misted violins, his
eyes burned a path. Yet, although she knew that he asked for a signal to
show her consciousness of him, she could not give one. Had his glances
seemed less important, she would have smiled; but since for the first
time in her life a man stirred her, bashfulness caught her icily and,
while her heart flamed, her eyes were cold. The curtain fell, rising
again at once to let the bouquets fall softly round the silver shoes of
the Ballerinas. The odor of stephanotis, mingled with the sharper
perfume of carn