childhood," he said quietly. Then, still more quietly: "'Fairy Lady, you
are so beautiful!'"

"But you're not a child, so don't poach Coppertop's preserves!" retorted
Magda swiftly. "Let's get to work, Antoine. I'll just change into my
practice-kit and then I want to run through the 'Swan-Maiden's' dance.
You fix the lighting."

She vanished into an adjoining room, while Davilof proceeded to switch
off most of the burners, leaving only those which illumined the space in
front of the great mirror. The remainder of the big room receded into a
grey twilight encircling the patch of luminance.

Presently Magda reappeared wearing a loose tunic of some white silken
material, girdled at the waist, but yet leaving her with perfect freedom
of limb.

Davilof watched her as she came down the long room with the
feather-light, floating walk of the trained dancer, and something leaped
into his eyes that was very different from mere admiration--something
that, taken in conjunction with Lady Arabella's caustic comments of a
few days ago, might have warned Magda had she seen it.

But with her thoughts preoccupied by the work in hand she failed to
notice it, and, advancing till she faced the great mirror, she executed
a few steps in front of it, humming the motif of _The Swan-Maiden_ music
under her breath.

"Play, Antoine," she threw at him over her shoulder.

Davilof hesitated, made a movement towards her, then wheeled round
abruptly and went to the piano. A moment later the exquisite, smoothly
rippling music which he had himself written for the Swan-Maiden dance
purled out into the room.

The story of the Swan-Maiden had been taken from an old legend which
told of a beautiful maiden and the youth who loved her.

According to the narrative, the pair were unfortunate enough to incur
the displeasure of the evil fairy Ritmagar, and the latter, in order to
punish them, transformed the maiden into a white swan, thus separating
the hapless lovers for ever. Afterwards, the disconsolate youth,
bemoaning the cruelty of fate, used to wander daily along the shores of
the lake where the maiden was compelled to dwell in her guise of a swan,
and eventually Ritmagar, apparently touched to a limited compassion,
permitted the Swan-Maiden to resume her human form once a day during the
hour immediately preceding sunset. But the condition was attached that
she must always return to the lake ere the sun sank below the horizon,
when she would be