The music swelled and mounted.  So did the dance.  Wave followed on ripple, sea on wave, and on the sea the foaming, far-flung billow.  Limb after limb, the whole supple body of the blind dancer came into play; yet there was no visible tension.  Never dead, never hard, but limp,—­as limp as flowing, rushing water,—­she whirled and swayed through all the emotions until, at the highest pitch of the mounting music, she fell prone, riven by a single, throbbing sob.  Down came the curtain.  The music faded away in a long, descending sweep.

Men shouted hoarsely, unaware of what they were crying out, and women for once clapped to make a noise, and split their gloves.  A youth, his hair disordered and a hectic flush in his cheeks, rushed straight for the stage, crying, “Who is she?”

Lewis stuck out his foot and tripped him.  Great was his fall, and the commotion thereof switched the emotions of the throng back to sanity.  Conventional, dogged clapping and shouts of “Bis!  Bis!” were relied on to bring the curtain up again, and relied on in vain.  Once more Mrs. Ruttle-Marter was surrounded and beseeched to use her best efforts.  As she acceded, a servant handed Lewis a scribbled note.  “Come and take me out of this.  Vi,” he read.  He slipped out behind the servant.

In the cab they were silent for a long time.  Lewis’s eyes kept wandering over Vi, conventional once more, and lazing in her corner.

“Well,” she drawled at last, “what did you think of it?”

“Think of it?” said Lewis.  “There were three times when I wanted to shout, ‘Hold that pose!’ After that—­well, after that my brain stopped working.”

“Do you mean it?” asked Vi.

“Mean what?”

“About wanting me to hold a pose.”

“Yes,” said Lewis; “of course.  What of it?”

“What of it?  Why, I will.  When?”

“Do you mean it?” asked Lewis.

Vi nodded.

“Name your own time.”

“To-morrow,” said Vi, “at ten.”

The following morning Lewis was up early, putting his great, bare studio in fitting order, and trying to amplify and secure the screened-in corner which previous models had frequently damned as a purely tentative dressing-room.  Promptly at ten Vi appeared.

“Where’s your maid?” asked Lewis.  “You’ve simply got to have a maid along for this sort of thing.”

“You’re wrong,” said Vi.  “It’s just the sort of thing one doesn’t have a maid for.  It’s easier to trust two to keep quiet than to keep a maid from vain imaginings.  And—­it’s a lot less expensive.”

“Well,” said Lewis, “where’s your costume?”

“Here,” said Vi, “in my recticule.”

They laughed.  Ten minutes later Vi appeared in her filmy costume.  Lewis’s face no longer smiled.  He was sitting on a bench at the farther end of the room, solemnly smoking a pipe.  He did not seem to notice that Vi’s whole body was suffused, nervous.