s us something we do not expect," said Santiago to
Rezanov, whose eyes were twinkling. "The other girls dance El Son and
La Jota very gracefully--yes. But Conchita dances with her head, and
the musicians and the partner, when she takes one, have all they can do
to follow. She will choose you, next, senor."

Rezanov turned cold, and measured the distance to the door. "I hope
not!" he said. "I should hate nothing so much as to make an exhibition
of myself. The dances I know--that is all very well--but to
improvise--for the love of heaven help me to get out!"

But Santiago, who was watching his sister intently, replied: "Wait a
moment, Excellency. I do not think she will choose another. I know by
her feet that she intends to dance El Son--in her own way, of
course--after all."

Concha circled about the room twice with Sturgis, lifted him to the
seventh heaven of expectancy, dismissed him as abruptly as the others.
Lifting her chin with an expression of supreme disdain for all his sex,
she stood a moment, swaying, her arms hanging at her sides.

"I am glad she will not dance with Weeliam," muttered Santiago. "I
love him--yes; but the Spanish dance is not for the Bostonian."

Rezanov awaited her performance with an interest that caused him some
cynical amusement. But in a moment he had surrendered to her once more
as a creature of inexhaustible surprise. The musicians, watching her,
began to play more slowly. Concha, her arms still supine, her head
lifted, her eyes half veiled, began to dance in a stately and measured
fashion that seemed to powder her hair and dissolve the partitions
before an endless vista of rooms. Rezanov had a sudden vision of the
Hall of the Ambassadors in the royal palace at Madrid, where, when a
young man on his travels, he had attended a state ball. There he had
seen the most dignified beauties of Europe dance at the most formal of
its courts. But Concha created the illusion of having stepped down
from the throne in some bygone fashion to dance alone for her subjects
and adorers.

She raised her arms, barely budding at the top, with a gesture that was
not only the poetry of grace but as though bestowing some royal favor;
when she curved and swayed her body, again it was with the lofty
sweetness of one too highly placed to descend to mere seductiveness.
She glided up and down, back and forth, with a dreamy revealing motion
as if assisting to shape some vague impassioned image in the b