as extremely unlikely that any member of that
audience recognized the fact, the boy was a musician by the divine right
of gift, a gift bestowed at birth. A wheezy old piano, and yet he drew
from it sweet and thrilling notes; a hackneyed, cheap waltz measure, and
yet he invested it with the glamour of romance.

A ripple stirred all those waiting people, as a wind stirs a field of
wheat, a movement of settling and attention. Hanson, who had been
careful to secure a seat in the front row of chairs, was conscious that
his heart was beating faster.

"This is where she whirls in through that door by the piano," he
muttered to himself with the acumen born of long knowledge of the stage
and its conventions. He had a swift mental vision of a graceful painted
creature, all undulating movement, alluring smiles, twinkling feet and
waving arms. This passed with a slight shock as a girl entered the door
by the piano, as he had foreseen, and walked indifferently to the
center of the room, and then, without a bow to her audience, began,
still with an air of languor and absorption, to take vague, sliding
steps, gradually falling in with the waltz rhythm, but, even so, the
movement was without any definite form, certainly not enough to call it
a dance.

As she swayed about, listless, apparently indifferent to any effect she
might be producing, Hanson had a full opportunity to study her, and, in
that concentrated attention, the man and the manager were fused. He was
at once the cynical showman discounting every favorable impression and
the most critical and disillusioned of audiences.

In this dancer he saw a woman who was like the desert willow and younger
than he had supposed; straight and supple, with a body of such
plasticity, such instant response to the directing will of its possessor
as only comes from the constant and arduous exercises begun in early
childhood.

"Been trained for it since she was born, almost," was Hanson's first
unspoken comment.

She wore a soft, clinging frock of scarlet crepe. It was short enough to
display her ankles, slender for a dancer, and her arched feet in
heelless black slippers. In contrast to her red frock was a string of
sparkling green stones which fell low on her breast. Her long, brown
fingers blazed with rings, and in her ears, swinging against her olive
cheeks, were great hoops of dull gold. Her black shining hair was
gathered low on her neck, her unsmiling lips were scarlet as a
pomegr