e, and so she
has become one of us." Madame smiled strangely from her blank, round
white face.

"I should love to be one of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras," said Alvina.

"Yes--well--why not? Why not become one? Why not? What you say,
Ciccio? You can play the piano, perhaps do other things. Perhaps
better than Kishwegin. What you say, Ciccio, should she not join us?
Is she not one of us?"

He smiled and showed his teeth but did not answer.

"Well, what is it? Say then? Shall she not?"

"Yes," said Ciccio, unwilling to commit himself.

"Yes, so I say! So I say. Quite a good idea! We will think of it,
and speak perhaps to your father, and you shall come! Yes."

So the two women returned to Woodhouse by the tram-car, while Ciccio
rode home on his bicycle. It was surprising how little Madame and
Alvina found to say to one another.

Madame effected the reunion of her troupe, and all seemed pretty
much as before. She had decided to dance the next night, the
Saturday night. On Sunday the party would leave for Warsall, about
thirty miles away, to fulfil their next engagement.

That evening Ciccio, whenever he had a moment to spare, watched
Alvina. She knew it. But she could not make out what his watching
meant. In the same way he might have watched a serpent, had he found
one gliding in the theatre. He looked at her sideways, furtively,
but persistently. And yet he did not want to meet her glance. He
avoided her, and watched her. As she saw him standing, in his
negligent, muscular, slouching fashion, with his head dropped
forward, and his eyes sideways, sometimes she disliked him. But
there was a sort of _finesse_ about his face. His skin was
delicately tawny, and slightly lustrous. The eyes were set in so
dark, that one expected them to be black and flashing. And then one
met the yellow pupils, sulphureous and remote. It was like meeting a
lion. His long, fine nose, his rather long, rounded chin and curling
lips seemed refined through ages of forgotten culture. He was
waiting: silent there, with something muscular and remote about his
very droop, he was waiting. What for? Alvina could not guess. She
wanted to meet his eye, to have an open understanding with him. But
he would not. When she went up to talk to him, he answered in his
stupid fashion, with a smile of the mouth and no change of the eyes,
saying nothing at all. Obstinately he held away from her. When he
was in his war-paint, for one moment she hated his muscular,