Anitra, the light-limbed and dark-eyed daughter of the chief, has won
the especial favor of the prophet, and dances alone before him after her
companions have retired. Peer is enraptured and promises to make her an
houri in paradise, and to give her a soul, a very little one, in return
for her love and service. She is not much tempted by the soul, but
finally consents to fly to the desert with him for the gift of the large
opal from his turban. Anitra’s dance is more warmly subjective, more
distinctly personal in character than the preceding, at once lighter and
more rapid, more tender and winningly graceful, full of arch defiance,
playful witcheries, and the coquettish confidence of the high-born
maiden and practised solo-danseuse, certain of her power and bent on
using it to the full, for the complete subjugation of their prophet
guest. We can almost feel her smoothly undulating movements, her swift,
but seductive, changes of pose, and those sharp, stolen side-glances,
skilfully blended of shyness and fire, flashing from beneath her
drooping black lashes, fascinating, but dangerous, like lightning gleams
from a fringe of somber cloud.