pipe. "Woodland nymphs, phantom pixies floating on the wind, zephyrs
in the guise of fairies, dreams come true,--my dear Olga, you are a
sorceress. You change clods into moonbeams, you turn human beings into
vapours, you cast the mantle of enchantment over the midsummer night,
and we see Oberon, Titania and all the rest of them disporting on the
breeze. And to think that only this afternoon I saw all of those gawky
girls working in the fields, their legs the colour of tan bark, with
sandals that looked like canal-boats, skirts made of hemp,--just regular
kids. And you transform them tonight into gleaming cloudlets to float
upon the ambient atmosphere--"

"For heaven's sake, Pete, stop being an author and talk like a real
man," interrupted Fitts. "Can't you say, 'Gee, they was great, Olger'?"

It was "Twelfth Night," and Olga's pupils had given a fairy dance on
the Green. To conclude the almost mystic entertainment, the great Obosky
herself had appeared in one of her most marvellous creations,--the
"Dance of the Caliph's Dream,"--the sensational, never-to-be-forgotten
dance that had been the talk of three continents. There was no spotlight
to follow her sinuous, scantily clad figure as it spun and leaped and
glided about the dim, starlit Green; there was no blare of brass and
cymbals, nor the haunting wail of flageolets,--only the tinkle of
mandolins and Spanish guitars to guide her bewildering feet,--and yet
she had never been so alluring.

When it was all over,--when the charmed circle of faces had vanished
into the byways of the night,--she came and flung herself down upon
the steps of the Governor's mansion. She had wrapped her warm body in a
sheath of yellow velvet; the tips of her bare feet were exposed to the
grateful night air. Her uplifted eyes shone like the stars that looked
down into them; her lips were parted in a smile; her flesh quivered with
the physical ecstasy that comes only with supreme lassitude.

"You never danced so beautifully in your life, Olga," said Careni-Amori.
"And after two years, too. I cannot understand. I shall never sing again
as I sang two years ago. But you,--ah, you dance even better. I take
courage from you. Perhaps my voice has not gone to seed as Joseppi's
has,--poor man. Not that it had very far to go,--but still it was second
only to Caruso's, and that is something. How can it be that you improve
with idleness, while I--while we go the other way?"

"I shall never dance like