giving a peculiar note with the uniformity of their brown holland suits;
and occasionally a couple of British sailors come sauntering in with
fine self-assurance, their fair hair and red cheeks contrasting with the
general swartness. You pay no entrance money, but your refreshment costs
a _real_--which is twopence ha'penny; and for that you may enjoy not
only a cup of coffee or a glass of manzanilla, but an evening's
entertainment. As the night wears on the heat is oven-like, and the air
is thick and grey with the smoke of countless cigarettes.

The performance consists of three 'turns' only, and these are repeated
every hour. The company boasts generally of a male singer, a female
singer, and of the _corps de ballet_, which is made up of six persons.
Spain is the stronghold of the out-of-date, and I suppose it alone
preserves the stiff muslin ballet-skirts which delighted our fathers. To
see half-a-dozen dancers thus attired in a remote Andalusian music-hall
is so entirely unexpected that it quite takes the breath away. But by
the time the traveller reaches Seville he must be used to disillusion,
and he must be ingenuous indeed if he expects the Spaniards to have
preserved their national costume for the most national of their
pastimes. Yet the dances are still Spanish; and even if the pianoforte
has ousted the guitar, the castanets give, notwithstanding, a
characteristic note which the aggressive muslin and the pink,
ill-fitting tights cannot entirely destroy.

* * *

But I remember one dancer who was really a great artist. She was
ill-favoured, of middle age, thin; but every part of her was imbued with
grace, expressive, from the tips of her toes to the tips of her fingers.
The demands of the public sometimes forced upon her odious
ballet-skirts, sometimes she wasted her talent on the futilities of
skirt-dancing; but chiefly she loved the national measures, and her
phenomenal leanness made her only comfortable in the national dress. She
travelled from place to place in Spain with another woman whom she had
taught to dance, and whose beauty she used cleverly as a foil to her own
uncomeliness; and so wasted herself in these low resorts, earning hardly
sufficient to keep body and soul together. I wish I could remember her
name.

When she began to dance you forgot her ugliness; her gaunt arms gained
shape, her face was transfigured, her dark eyes flashed, and her mouth
and smile said a thousand eloquent things. Even