“Think it?  I know it!” She gave him a strange look, luminous yet mysterious, a curtain withdrawn only to show a shining mist with something undefined but dazzling beyond.  “I’ve always known it!” And she turned away from him abruptly.

He sprang after her.  “But you’re wrong.  I’ve never——­”

“Oh, yes, you have.”  They began to discuss it, and for better consideration of the theme it became necessary for Cora to “cut” the next dance, promised to another, and to give it to Mr. Wattling.  They danced several times together, and Mr. Wattling’s expression was serious.  The weavers of the tapestry smiled and whispered things the men would not have understood—­nor believed.

Ray Vilas, seated alone in a recessed and softly lighted gallery, did not once lose sight of the flitting sorceress.  With his elbows on the railing, he leaned out, his head swaying slowly and mechanically as she swept up and down the tumultuously moving room, his passionate eyes gaunt and brilliant with his hunger.  And something very like a general thrill passed over the assembly when, a little later, it was seen that he was dancing with her.  Laura, catching a glimpse of this couple, started and looked profoundly disturbed.

The extravagance of Vilas’s passion and the depths he sounded, in his absurd despair when discarded, had been matters of almost public gossip; he was accounted a somewhat scandalous and unbalanced but picturesque figure; and for the lady whose light hand had wrought such havoc upon him to be seen dancing with him was sufficiently startling to elicit the universal remark—­evidently considered superlative—­that it was “just like Cora Madison!” Cora usually perceived, with an admirably clear head, all that went on about her; and she was conscious of increasing the sensation, when after a few turns round the room, she allowed her partner to conduct her to a secluding grove of palms in the gallery.  She sank into the chair he offered, and, fixing her eyes upon a small lamp of coloured glass which hung overhead, ostentatiously looked bored.

“At your feet, Cora,” he said, seating himself upon a stool, and leaning toward her.  “Isn’t it appropriate that we should talk to music—­we two?  It shouldn’t be that quick step though—­not dance-music—­should it?”

“Don’t know ’m sure,” murmured Cora.

“You were kind to dance with me,” he said huskily.  “I dared to speak to you——­”

She did not change her attitude nor the direction of her glance.  “I couldn’t cut you very well with the whole town looking on.  I’m tired of being talked about.  Besides, I don’t care much who I dance with—­so he doesn’t step on me.”

“Cora,” he said, “it is the prelude to `L’Arlesienne’ that they should play for you and me.  Yes, I think it should be that.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s just a rustic tragedy, the story of a boy in the south of France who lets love become his whole life, and then—­it kills him.”