, and watch me dance your love into my life."

The wind was rising and sighed through the wood, shaking myriad leaves
from the trees. Blending with its faint cry came a long, sweet,
sustained note of music. Lambert started, so weird and unexpected was
the sound. "Kara, isn't it?" he asked, looking inquiringly at Chaldea.

"He talks to the night--he speaks with the wind. Oh-ah-ah-ah.
Ah-oha-oha-oha-ho," sang the gypsy, clapping her hands softly, then,
as the music came breathing from the hidden violin in dreamy sensuous
tones, she raised her bare arms and began to dance. The place, the
dancer, the hour, the mysterious music, and the pale enchantments of
the moon--it was like fairyland.

Lambert soon let his cigar go out, so absorbed did he become in watching
the dance. It was a wonderful performance, sensuous and weirdly unusual.
He had never seen a dance exactly like it before. The violin notes
sounded like actual words, and the dancer answered them with responsive
movements of her limbs, so that without speech the onlooker saw a
love-drama enacted before his eyes. Chaldea--so he interpreted the
dance--swayed gracefully from the hips, without moving her feet, in the
style of a Nautch girl. She was waiting for some one, since to right and
left she swung with a delicate hand curved behind her ear. Suddenly she
started, as if she heard an approaching footstep, and in maidenly
confusion glided to a distance, where she stood with her hands across
her bosom, the very picture of a surprised nymph. Mentally, the dance
translated itself to Lambert somewhat after this fashion:

"She waits for her lover. That little run forward means that she sees
him coming. She falls at his feet; she kisses them. He raises her--I
suppose that panther spring from the ground means that he raises her.
She caresses him with much fondling and many kisses. By Jove, what
pantomime! Now she dances to please him. She stops and trembles; the
dance does not satisfy. She tries another. No! No! Not that! It is too
dreamy--the lover is in a martial mood. This time she strikes his fancy.
Kara is playing a wild Hungarian polonaise. Wonderful! Wonderful!"

He might well say so, and he struggled to his feet, leaning against the
pillar of stone to see the dancer better. From the wood came the fierce
and stirring Slav music, and Chaldea's whole expressive body answered to
every note as a needle does to a magnet. She leaped, clicking her heels
together, advanced