re. Besides, I have
reasons for choosing another title. I want to avoid a damage suit by
Webster and Forster. Please begin, Miss Hahlstroem. We have to hurry." Mr.
Lilienfeld clapped his hands and called to the musicians to strike up.

Again those provoking strains, immediately upon which Mara danced in,
like a naked elf floating in the air. While flying in wide circles about
the flower, as yet unseen, she resembled a fabulous, exotic butterfly
in her transparent veil shot with gold. Willy Snyders called her a naiad,
Ritter a moth. Franck said nothing, merely keeping his eyes fixed upon
the transformed girl.

The moment came when with her eyes closed, like a somnambulist, she
sniffed the perfume and began to seek its source. In that seeking, there
was both innocence and maddening wantonness. A fine quiver went through
her body, like the quiver of a moth in its sultry love-play. At last she
smelt of the flower itself, and her sudden rigidity showed that she had
perceived the great spider on it.

As Frederick knew, she did not always represent the horror, the numbness
of fright and the flight in the same way. The artists all admired the
change of expression on the dancer's sweet face, where faint distaste
gave way to violent repulsion, fright and stark horror. As if a great
hand had tossed her, she flew to the outer limits of the circle of light.

But a force compelled her to return to the flower. Mara no longer
followed sweet scents. The hideous venomous creature in the flower's
calyx drew her against her will, struggling wildly. Her lids were no
longer closed. It was with clairvoyant eyes that the little thing went
to meet her doom.

"Strange," thought Frederick, "if her father really conceived the idea of
this dance himself. In that case he may have divined his daughter's fate
with greater insight and love than he is credited with. As she herself
admitted, she is sometimes more irresistibly drawn by what is ugly than
by what is pure and beautiful; and the dance follows a logical course
leading on pitilessly to tragedy."

The new phase of the dance began, in which the dancer looks at the spider
again, takes it to be harmless, and laughs at herself, as it were, for
her fears. Ingigerd portrayed this with inimitable grace, innocence and
merriness.

After passing through a state of pleasant repose, the fight with the
imaginary threads enmeshing her limbs began. At this point, the door
opening on the parquet creaked