III

Stephen had meant to stop only one day in Paris, and travel at night to

Marseilles, where he would have twelve or fifteen hours to wait before

the sailing of the ship on which he had engaged a cabin. But glancing

over a French paper while he breakfasted at the Westminster, he saw that

a slight accident had happened to the boat during a storm on her return

voyage from Algiers, and that she would be delayed three days for

repairs. This news made Stephen decide to remain in Paris for those

days, rather than go on and wait at Marseilles, or take another ship. He

did not want to see any one he knew, but he thought it would be pleasant

to spend some hours picture-gazing at the Louvre, and doing a few other

things which one ought to do in Paris, and seldom does.

That night he went to bed early and slept better than he had slept for

weeks. The next day he almost enjoyed, and when evening came, felt

desultory, even light-hearted.

Dining at his hotel, he overheard the people at the next table say they

were going to the Folies Bergères to see Victoria Ray dance, and

suddenly Stephen made up his mind that he would go there too: for if

life had been running its usual course with him, he would certainly have

gone to see Victoria Ray in London. She had danced lately at the Palace

Theatre for a month or six weeks, and absorbed as he had been in his own

affairs, he had heard enough talk about this new dancer to know that she

had made what is called a "sensation."

The people at the next table were telling each other that Victoria Ray's

Paris engagement was only for three nights, something special, with

huge pay, and that there was a "regular scramble" for seats, as the girl

had been such a success in New York and London. The speakers, who were

English and provincial, had already taken places, but there did not

appear to be much hope that Stephen could get anything at the last

minute. The little spice of difficulty gave a fillip of interest,

however; and he remembered how the charming child on the boat had said

that she "liked doing difficult things." He wondered what she was doing

now; and as he thought of her, white and ethereal in the night and in

the dawn-light, she seemed to him like the foam-flowers that had

blossomed for an instant on the crests of dark waves, through which

their vessel forged. "For a moment white, then gone forever." The words

glittered in his mind, and fascinated him, calling up the image of the

girl, pale against the night and rainy sea. "For a moment white, then

gone forever," he repeated, and asked himself whence came the line. From

Burns, he fancied; and thought it quaintly appropriate to the fair child

whose clear whiteness had thrown a gleam into his life before she

vanished.

All the seats for this second night of Victoria Ray's short engagement

were sold at the Folies Bergères, he found, from the dearest to the

cheapest: but there was standing room still when Stephen arrived, and he

squeezed himself in among a group of light-hearted, long-haired students

from the Latin Quarter. He had an hour to wait before Victoria Ray would

dance, but there was some clever conjuring to be seen, a famous singer

of _chansons_ to be heard, and other performances which made the time

pass well enough. Then, at last, it was the new dancer's "turn."

The curtain remained down for several minutes, as some scenic

preparation was necessary before her first dance. Gay French music was

playing, and people chattered through it, or laughed in high Parisian

voices. A blue haze of smoke hung suspended like a thin veil, and the

air was close, scented with tobacco and perfume. Stephen looked at his

programme, beginning to feel bored. His elbows were pressed against his

sides by the crowd. Miss Ray was down for two dances, the Dance of the

Statue and the Dance of the Shadow. The atmosphere of the place

depressed him. He doubted after all, that he would care for the dancing.

But as he began to wish he had not come the curtain went up, to show the

studio of a sculptor, empty save for the artist's marble masterpieces.

Through a large skylight, and a high window at the back of the stage, a

red glow of sunset streamed into the bare room. In the shadowy corners

marble forms were grouped, but in the centre, directly under the full

flood of rose-coloured light, the just finished statue of a girl stood

on a raised platform. She was looking up, and held a cup in one lifted

hand, as if to catch the red wine of sunset. Her draperies, confined by

a Greek ceinture under the young bust, fell from shoulder to foot in

long clear lines that seemed cut in gleaming stone. The illusion was

perfect. Even in that ruddy blaze the delicate, draped form appeared to

be of carved marble. It was almost impossible to believe it that of a

living woman, and its grace of outline and pose was so perfect that

Stephen, in his love of beauty, dreaded the first movement which must

change, if not break, the tableau. He said to himself that there was

some faint resemblance between this chiselled loveliness and the vivid

charm of the pretty child he had met on the boat. He could imagine that

a statue for which she had stood as model might look like this, though

the features seemed to his eye more regular than those of the girl.

As he gazed, the music, which had been rich and colourful, fell into

softer notes; and the rose-sunset faded to an opal twilight, purple to

blue, blue to the silver of moonlight, the music changing as the light

changed, until at last it was low and slumberous as the drip-drip of a

plashing fountain. Then, into the dream of the music broke a sound like

the distant striking of a clock. It was midnight, and all the statues

in the sculptor's bare, white studio began to wake at the magic stroke

which granted them a few hours of life.

There was just a shimmer of movement in the dim corners. Marble limbs

stirred, marble face turned slowly to gaze at marble face; yet, as if

they could be only half awakened in the shadows where the life-giving

draught of moonlight might not flow, there was but the faintest flicker

of white forms and draperies. It was the just finished statue of the

girl which felt the full thrill of moonshine and midnight. She woke

rapturously, and drained the silver moon-wine in her cup (the music told

the story of her first thought and living heart-beat): then down she

stepped from the platform where the sculptor's tools still lay, and

began to dance for the other statues who watched in the dusk, hushed

back into stillness under the new spell of her enchantments.

Stephen had never seen anything like that dance. Many pretty _premières

danseuses_ he had admired and applauded, charming and clever young women

of France, of Russia, of Italy, and Spain: and they had roused him and

all London to enthusiasm over dances eccentric, original, exquisite, or

wild. But never had there been anything like this. Stephen had not known

that a dance could move him as this did. He was roused, even thrilled by

its poetry, and the perfect beauty of its poses, its poises. It must, he

supposed, have been practised patiently, perhaps for years, yet it

produced the effect of being entirely unstudied. At all events, there

was nothing in the ordinary sense "professional" about it. One would

say--not knowing the supreme art of supreme grace--that a joyous child,

born to the heritage of natural grace, might dance thus by sheer

inspiration, in ecstasy of life and worship of the newly felt beauty of

earth. Stephen did know something of art, and the need of devotion to

its study; yet he found it hard to realize that this awakened marble

loveliness had gone through the same performance week after week, month

after month, in America and England. He preferred rather to let himself

fancy that he was dreaming the whole thing; and he would gladly have

dreamed on indefinitely, forgetting the smoky atmosphere, forgetting the

long-haired students and all the incongruous surroundings. The gracious

dream gave him peace and pleasure such as he had not known since the

beginning of the Northmorland case.

Through the house there was a hush, unusual at the Folies Bergères.

People hardly knew what to make of the dances, so different from any

ever seen in a theatre of Paris. Stephen was not alone in feeling the

curious dream-spell woven by music and perfection of beauty. But the

light changed. The moonlight slowly faded. Dancer and music faltered, in

the falling of the dark hour before dawn. The charm was waning. Soft

notes died, and quavered in apprehension. The magic charm of the moon

was breaking, had broken: a crash of cymbals and the studio was dark.

Then light began to glimmer once more, but it was the chill light of

dawn, and growing from purple to blue, from blue to rosy day, it showed

the marble statues fast locked in marble sleep again. On the platform

stood the girl with uplifted arm, holding her cup, now, to catch the

wine of sunrise; and on the delicately chiselled face was a faint smile

which seemed to hide a secret. When the first ray of yellow sunshine

gilded the big skylight, a door up-stage opened and the sculptor came

in, wearing his workman's blouse. He regarded his handiwork, as the

curtain came down.

When the music of the dream had ceased and suddenly became

ostentatiously puerile, the audience broke into a tumult of applause.

Women clapped their hands furiously and many men shouted "brava, brava,"

hoping that the curtain might rise once more on the picture; but it did

not rise, and Stephen was glad. The dream would have been vulgarized by

repetition.

For fully five minutes the orchestra played some gay tune which every

one there had heard a hundred times; but abruptly it stopped, as if on

a signal. For an instant there was a silence of waiting and suspense,

which roused interest and piqued curiosity. Then there began a delicate

symphony which could mean nothing but spring in a forest, and on that

the curtain went up. The prophecy of the music was fulfilled, for the

scene was a woodland in April, with young leaves a-flicker and blossoms

in birth, the light song of the flutes and violins being the song of

birds in love. All the trees were brocaded with dainty, gold-green lace,

and daffodils sprouted from the moss at their feet.

The birds sang more gaily, and out from behind a silver-trunked beech

tree danced a figure in spring green. Her arms were full of flowers,

which she scattered as she danced, curtseying, mocking, beckoning the

shadow that followed her along the daisied grass. Her little feet were

bare, and flitted through the green folding of her draperies like white

night-moths fluttering among rose leaves. Her hair fell over her

shoulders, and curled below her waist. It was red hair that glittered

and waved, and she looked a radiant child of sixteen. Victoria Ray the

dancer, and the girl on the Channel boat were one.