He might well say so, and he struggled to his feet, leaning against the pillar of stone to see the dancer better.  From the wood came the fierce and stirring Slav music, and Chaldea’s whole expressive body answered to every note as a needle does to a magnet.  She leaped, clicking her heels together, advanced, as if on the foe, with a bound—­was flung back—­so it seemed—­and again sprang to the assault.  She stiffened to stubborn resistance—­she unexpectedly became pliant and yielding and graceful, and voluptuous, while the music took on the dreamy tones of love.  And Lambert translated the change after his own idea: 

“The music does not please the dancer—­it is too martial.  She fears lest her lover should rush off to the wars, and seeks to detain him by the dance of Venus.  But he will go.  He rises; he speeds away; she breaks off the dance.  Ah! what a cry of despair the violin gave just now.  She follows, stretching out her empty arms.  But it is useless—­he is gone.  Bah!  She snaps her fingers.  What does she care!  She will dance to please herself, and to show that her heart is yet whole.  What a Bacchanalian strain.  She whirls and springs and swoops and leaps.  She comes near to me, whirling like a Dervish; she recedes, and then comes spinning round again, like a mad creature.  And then—­oh, hang it!  What do you mean?  Chaldea, what are you doing?”

Lambert had some excuse for suddenly bursting into speech, when he cried out vigorously:  “Oh, hang it!” for Chaldea whirled right up to him and had laid her arms round his neck, and her lips against his cheek.  The music stopped abruptly, with a kind of angry snarl, as if Kara, furious at the sight, had put his wrath into the last broken note.  Then all was silent, and the artist found himself imprisoned in the arms of the woman, which were locked round his neck.  With an oath he unlinked her fingers and flung her away from him fiercely.

“You fool—­you utter fool!” cried Lambert, striving to calm down the beating of his heart, and restrain the racing of his blood, for he was a man, and the sudden action of the gypsy had nearly swept away his self-restraint.

“I love you—­I love you,” panted Chaldea from the grass, where he had thrown her.  “Oh, my beautiful one, I love you.”

“You are crazy,” retorted Lambert, quivering with many emotions to which he could scarcely put a name, so shaken was he by the experience.  “What the devil do you mean by behaving in this way?” and his voice rose in such a gust of anger that Kara, hidden in the wood, rejoiced.  He could not understand what was being said, but the tone of the voice was enough for him.  He did not know whether Chaldea was cheating the Gentile, or cheating him; but he gathered that in either case, she had been repulsed.  The girl knew that also, when her ardent eyes swept across Lambert’s white face, and she burst into tears of anger and disappointment.

“Oh, rye, I give you all, and you take nothing,” she wailed tearfully.