The figure was that of a tall woman.  Her dark hair—­and there was plenty of it—­was done in the Greek style.  So were her clothes, if such filmy draperies could be justly termed clothes.  They were caught up under her breasts, and hung in airy loops to a little below her knees.  They were worn so skilfully that art did not appear.  They fluttered about her softly moving limbs, but never flew.  The woman was apparently blindfolded—­with chiffon.  The foamy bandage proved an efficient mask.  Chiffon and draperies were of that color known to connoisseurs as cuisse de nymphe.

A buzz of interested questioning swept over the company.  Mrs. Ruttle-Marter, who had been quite abandoned for over an hour, suddenly found herself the center of a curious and eager group.

“Who is she?” “What is she?” “Where did you get her?”

The trembling hostess, flushed by the first successful moment in many dreary seasons, was almost too gulpy to speak.  But words came at last.

“Really, my dear Duchess, I don’t know who she is.  I don’t know where she comes from or what she is.  I only know her price and the name of her dance.  If I told the price, well, there wouldn’t be any rush in this crowd to engage her.”  So early did power lead the long-suffering Mrs. Ruttle-Marter to lap at revenge!

“Well, tell us the name of her dance, anyway,” said a tall, soldierly gray-head that was feeling something for the first time in twenty years.  “Do hurry!  She’s going to begin.”

“I can do that,” said Mrs. Ruttle-Marter.  “Her dance is called ’Love is blind.’”

“Love is blind,” repeated Lewis to Lady Derl.  “Let’s see what she makes of it.”

People did not note just when the music began.  They suddenly realized it.  It was so with Vi’s dance.  So gradually did her body sway into motion that somebody who had been staring at her from the moment she appeared whispered, “Why, she’s dancing!” only when the first movement was nearing its close.

The music was doubly masked.  It was masked behind the wings and behind the dance.  It did not seem interwoven with movement, but appeared more as a soft background of sound to motion.  So it remained through all the first part of the dance which followed unerringly all the traditions of Greek classicism, depending for expression entirely on swaying arms and body.

“Who would have thought it!” whispered Lewis.  “To do something well at a range of two thousand years!  That’s more than art; it’s genius.”

“It’s not genius,” whispered back Lady Derl; “it’s just body.  What’s more, I think I recognize the body.”

“Well,” said Lewis, “what if you do?  Play the game.”

“So I’m right, eh?  Oh, I’ll play the game, and hate her less into the bargain.”

So suddenly that it startled, came a crashing chord.  The dancer quivered from head to foot, became very still, as though she listened to a call, and then swirled into the rhythm of the music.  The watchers caught their breath and held it.  The new movement was alien to anything the marbled halls of Greece are supposed to have seen; yet it held a haunting reminder, as though classicism had suddenly given birth to youth.