A vast breath went up from the audience.  She held them as by magic—­all save one who leaned back in his corner with no quickening of the pulses and watched the girl beside him sitting motionless with her blue eyes wide and fixed as though they gazed upon some horror from which there was no escape.

The rose light deepened to crimson.  She was dancing now in giddy circles like a many-coloured moth dazzled by the dawn.  The melody was growing.  Other bird-voices were swelling into sound—­a wild and flute-like music of cadences that came and went—­elusive as the laughter of wood-nymphs in an enchanted glade.  And every one of that silent crowd of watchers saw the red light of dawn breaking through the trees of a dream-forest that no human foot had ever trod.

Slowly the crimson lightened.  The day was coming, and the silent-flitting moth of night was turning into a butterfly of purest gold.  The scarf still floated about her like a gold-edged cloud.  The giddy whirl was over.  She came to rest, poised, quivering in the light of the newly-risen sun, every line of her exquisite body in the accord of a perfect symmetry.  Yes, she was amazing; she was unique.  Wherever she went, the spell still held.  But to-night she was as one inspired.  She did not see her spellbound audience.  She was dancing for one alone.  She was as a woman who waits for her lover.

In some fashion this fact communicated itself to her worshippers.  They guessed that somewhere near that dazzling figure the stranger whom no one knew was watching.  Insensibly, through the medium of the dancer, his presence made itself felt.  When that wonderful dance of the dawn was over and the thunder of applause had died away, they looked around, asking who and where he was.  But no one knew, and though curiosity was rife it seemed unlikely that it would be satisfied that night.

Up in the gallery Toby drew a deep breath as of one coming out of a trance, and turned towards the man beside her.  The light had been turned on in the salon below, and it struck upwards on her face, showing it white and weary.

“So she has found another victim!” she said.

“It seems so,” said Saltash.

She looked at him in the dimness.  “Did you know that—­that Captain Larpent was with her?”

“No,” said Saltash.  He leaned forward abruptly, meeting her look with a sudden challenge.  “Did you?”

She drew back sharply.  “Of course not!  Of course not!  What—­what should I know about her?”

He leaned back again without comment, and lighted another cigarette.

At the end of several seconds of silence, Toby spoke again, her locked fingers pulling against each other nervously.

“I wonder—­do you mind—­if I go soon?  I—­I am rather tired.”

The lights went out as she spoke, and Saltash’s face became invisible.  He spoke quite kindly, but with decision, out of the darkness.