e of Asiatic
Mystery. And I found myself close to the platform, listening to the cry
of a man in gilt knickerbockers.

"Ladies! Gentlemen! All!" he summoned. "Never in the history of
the show business has there been anything resemblin' this. Come
here--here--here--here! See Zorah, queen of the West and princess of the
East, who is about to begin one of her most sublimely sensational
dances. See her, see her, you may never again see her! Graceful,
glittering, genteel. Graceful, glittering, gen-te-e-e-l. I am telling
you about Zorah, queen of the West and princess of the East, in her
ancient Asiatic dance, the most up-to-date little act in the entire show
business to-day. Here she is, waiting for you--you--you. Everybody
that's got the dime!"

Until he ceased, I had hardly noticed Zorah herself, standing in the
canvas portico. The woman had, I then observed, a kind of appealing
prettiness and a genuineness of pose. She was looking out on the crowd
with the usual manner of simulated shyness, but to the shyness was given
conviction by an uplifted hand, palm outward, hiding her mouth. I noted
her small, stained face, her splendid unbound hair--and then a certain
resemblance caught at my heart. And I saw that she was wearing a skirt
made of a man's plaid shawl, and about her shoulders was a rosy,
old-fashioned nubia. Her face and throat were stained, and so were her
thin little arms--but I knew her.

The performance, as the man had said, was about to begin, and already he
was giving Zorah her signal to go within. Somehow I bought a ticket and
hurried into the tent. The seats were sparingly occupied, and I saw, as
I would have guessed, no one whom I knew in the eager, stamping little
audience. In their midst I lost the slim figure that had preceded me,
until she mounted the platform and swept before the footlights a stately
courtesy.

And there, in the smoky little tent, Ellen Ember began to dance, with
her quite surprising grace--as Pierrette might have danced in Carnival.
It was the charming, faery measure which she had danced for me in Miss
Liddy's dining-room; and as she had sung to me then, so now, in a sweet
piping voice, she sang her incongruous little song:--

O Day of wind and laughter,
A goddess born are you,
Whose eyes are in the morning
Blue--blue!
The slumbrous noon your body is,
Your feet are the shadow's flight,
But the immortal soul of you
Is Night.

It seemed to me t