Again those provoking strains, immediately upon which Mara danced in, like a naked elf floating in the air.  While flying in wide circles about the flower, as yet unseen, she resembled a fabulous, exotic butterfly in her transparent veil shot with gold.  Willy Snyders called her a naiad, Ritter a moth.  Franck said nothing, merely keeping his eyes fixed upon the transformed girl.

The moment came when with her eyes closed, like a somnambulist, she sniffed the perfume and began to seek its source.  In that seeking, there was both innocence and maddening wantonness.  A fine quiver went through her body, like the quiver of a moth in its sultry love-play.  At last she smelt of the flower itself, and her sudden rigidity showed that she had perceived the great spider on it.

As Frederick knew, she did not always represent the horror, the numbness of fright and the flight in the same way.  The artists all admired the change of expression on the dancer’s sweet face, where faint distaste gave way to violent repulsion, fright and stark horror.  As if a great hand had tossed her, she flew to the outer limits of the circle of light.

But a force compelled her to return to the flower.  Mara no longer followed sweet scents.  The hideous venomous creature in the flower’s calyx drew her against her will, struggling wildly.  Her lids were no longer closed.  It was with clairvoyant eyes that the little thing went to meet her doom.

“Strange,” thought Frederick, “if her father really conceived the idea of this dance himself.  In that case he may have divined his daughter’s fate with greater insight and love than he is credited with.  As she herself admitted, she is sometimes more irresistibly drawn by what is ugly than by what is pure and beautiful; and the dance follows a logical course leading on pitilessly to tragedy.”

The new phase of the dance began, in which the dancer looks at the spider again, takes it to be harmless, and laughs at herself, as it were, for her fears.  Ingigerd portrayed this with inimitable grace, innocence and merriness.

After passing through a state of pleasant repose, the fight with the imaginary threads enmeshing her limbs began.  At this point, the door opening on the parquet creaked on its hinges, and a tall, stately, noble-looking old man was ushered in.  He carried his hat in his hand.  His hair was silvery grey, and his clear-cut face was clean shaven.  He was a gentleman, “every inch of him.”  The young man who had led the stranger in, dashed out again, and the gentleman seated himself near the door by which he had entered.  Director Lilienfeld appeared and, turning and twisting like an eel around the awe-inspiring old man, officiously begged him to be seated in one of the front rows.

The gentleman, Mr. Garry, President of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and many other organisations, declined with a wave of his hand and fixed his attention upon the performance.  Ingigerd had been confused by the creaking of the door, the arrival of a new spectator, and the mumbled greeting of her impresario.  She stopped dancing.