Idiotic pose!  Idiotic!  But there was the old expression on her face, limpid, dovelike.  And that something of the divine about her dancing smote Fiorsen through all the sheer imbecility of her posturings.  Across and across she flitted, pirouetting, caught up at intervals by a Pierrot in black tights with a face as whitened as her own, held upside down, or right end up with one knee bent sideways, and the toe of a foot pressed against the ankle of the other, and arms arched above her.  Then, with Pierrot’s hands grasping her waist, she would stand upon one toe and slowly twiddle, lifting her other leg toward the roof, while the trembling of her form manifested cunningly to all how hard it was; then, off the toe, she capered out to the wings, and capered back, wearing on her face that divine, lost, dovelike look, while her perfect legs gleamed white up to the very thigh-joint.  Yes; on the stage she was adorable!  And raising his hands high, Fiorsen clapped and called out:  “Brava!” He marked the sudden roundness of her eyes, a tiny start—­no more.  She had seen him.  ’Ah!  Some don’t forget me!’ he thought.

And now she came on for her second dance, assisted this time only by her own image reflected in a little weedy pool about the middle of the stage.  From the programme Fiorsen read, “Ophelia’s last dance,” and again he grinned.  In a clinging sea-green gown, cut here and there to show her inevitable legs, with marguerites and corn-flowers in her unbound hair, she circled her own reflection, languid, pale, desolate; then slowly gaining the abandon needful to a full display, danced with frenzy till, in a gleam of limelight, she sank into the apparent water and floated among paper water-lilies on her back.  Lovely she looked there, with her eyes still open, her lips parted, her hair trailing behind.  And again Fiorsen raised his hands high to clap, and again called out:  ‘Brava!’ But the curtain fell, and Ophelia did not reappear.  Was it the sight of him, or was she preserving the illusion that she was drowned?  That “arty” touch would be just like her.

Averting his eyes from two comedians in calico, beating each other about the body, he rose with an audible “Pish!” and made his way out.  He stopped in the street to scribble on his card, “Will you see me?—­G.  F.” and took it round to the stage-door.  The answer came back: 

“Miss Wing will see you m a minute, sir.”

And leaning against the distempered wall of the draughty corridor, a queer smile on his face, Fiorsen wondered why the devil he was there, and what the devil she would say.

When he was admitted, she was standing with her hat on, while her “dresser” buttoned her patent-leather shoes.  Holding out her hand above the woman’s back, she said: 

“Oh, Mr. Fiorsen, how do you do?”

Fiorsen took the little moist hand; and his eyes passed over her, avoiding a direct meeting with her eyes.  He received an impression of something harder, more self-possessed, than he remembered.  Her face was the same, yet not the same; only her perfect, supple little body was as it had been.  The dresser rose, murmured:  “Good-afternoon, miss,” and went.