sand pities to destroy the prince's delusion.

"Tell his Highness," I said, "that the ladies will not act in this
picture. They only play comedy parts."

The princes received the news with open disappointment. If the Lovely
Lady and the Winsome Widow had only consented to appear on the back of
an elephant, or even in a palanquin, I imagine that they might have
received a mark of the royal favor in the form of a Cambodian
decoration. It is a gorgeous affair and is called, with great
appropriateness, the "Order of a Million Elephants and Parasols."

[Illustration: Dancing girls belonging to the royal ballet of the King
of Cambodia

The dancers ranged in age from twelve to fifteen. The costumes were
wonderful creations of cloth-of-gold heavily embroidered with jewels

_Photo by the Goldwyn-Bray-Powell Malaysian Expedition_]

That afternoon, on the broad marble terrace of the throne-hall, which
had been covered with a scarlet carpet for the occasion, the royal
ballet gave a special performance for our benefit. The dancers were
much younger than I had anticipated, ranging in age from twelve to
fifteen. Dancing has ever been a great institution in Cambodia, the
dances, which have behind them traditions of two thousand years, being
illustrative of incidents in the poem of the Ramayana and adhering
faithfully to the classical examples which are depicted on the walls of
the great temple at Angkor, such as the dancing of the goddess Apsaras,
her gestures, and her dress. The costumes worn by the dancing-girls
were the most gorgeous that we saw in Asia: wonderful creations of
cloth-of-gold heavily embroidered with jewels. Most of the dancers wore
towering, pointed head-dresses, similar to the historic crowns of the
Cambodian kings, though a few of them wore masks, one representing the
head of a fox, another a fish, a third a lion, which could be raised or
lowered, like the visors of medieval helmets. The faces of all of the
dancers were so heavily coated with powder and enamel that they would
have been cracked by a smile. It was a performance which would have
astonished and delighted the most blase audience on Broadway, but there
in the heart of Cambodia, with the terrace of a throne-hall for a
stage, with palaces, temples, and pagodas for a setting, with a blazing
tropic sun for a spot-light, and with actors and audience clad in
costumes as curious and colorful as those worn at the court of the
Queen of Sheba, it provided a