it nervously, sitting
down in a corner of the settee in the crouched attitude of a frightened
creature seeking cover. The band was playing in the _salon_ now, and
people were beginning to crowd in.

Saltash leaned back in his corner and smoked. His eyes went to and fro
ceaselessly, yet the girl beside him was aware of a scrutiny as
persistent as if they never left her. She sat in silence, clasping and
unclasping her hands, staring downwards at the shining stage.

Very soon the _salon_ was full of people, and the lights were lowered
there while on the stage only a single shaft of blinding violet light
remained, shooting downwards from the centre. Toby's eyes became fixed
upon that shaft of light. She seemed to have forgotten to breathe.

The band had ceased to play. There fell a potent silence. The multitude
below sat motionless, as if beneath a spell. And then she came.

No one saw her coming. She arrived quite suddenly as though she had slid
down that shaft of light. And she was there before them dancing, dancing,
like a winged thing in the violet radiance. Not a sound broke the
stillness save a single, wandering thread of melody that might have come
from the throat of a bird, soft, fitful, but half-awake in the dawning.

The violet light was merging imperceptibly into rose--the unutterable
rose of the early morning. It caught the dancing figure, and she lifted
her beautiful face to it and laughed. The gauzy scarf streamed out from
her shoulders like a flame, curving, mounting, sinking, now enveloping
the white arms, now flung wide in a circle of glittering splendour.

A vast breath went up from the audience. She held them as by magic--all
save one who leaned back in his corner with no quickening of the pulses
and watched the girl beside him sitting motionless with her blue eyes
wide and fixed as though they gazed upon some horror from which there was
no escape.

The rose light deepened to crimson. She was dancing now in giddy circles
like a many-coloured moth dazzled by the dawn. The melody was growing.
Other bird-voices were swelling into sound--a wild and flute-like music
of cadences that came and went--elusive as the laughter of wood-nymphs in
an enchanted glade. And every one of that silent crowd of watchers saw
the red light of dawn breaking through the trees of a dream-forest that
no human foot had ever trod.

Slowly the crimson lightened. The day was coming, and the silent-flitting
moth of night was tu