“Bless me, no, I didn’t mean that; that is, you know”—­Jack didn’t exactly see his way out of the dilemma—­“Edith is a little old-fashioned; but what’s the harm in this, anyway?”

“I did not say there was any,” she replied, with a smile at his embarrassment.  “Only I think there are half a dozen women in the room who could do it better, with a little practice.  It isn’t as Oriental as I thought it would be.”

“I cannot say as to that.  I know Edith thinks I’ve gone into the depths of the Orient.  But, on the whole, I’m glad—­” Jack stopped on the verge of speaking out of his better nature.

“Now don’t be rude again.  I quite understand that she is not here.”

The dialogue was cut short by a clapping of hands.  The spectators took their places again, the lights were lowered, the illumination was turned on the white canvas, and the dancer, warmed with wine and adulation, took a bolder pose, and, as her limbs began to move, sang a wild Moorish melody in a shrill voice, action and words flowing together into the passion of the daughter of tents in a desert life.  It was all vigorous, suggestive, more properly religious, Mavick would have said, and the applause was vociferous.

More wine went about.  There was another dance, and then another, a slow languid movement, half melancholy and full of sorrow, if one might say that of a movement, for unrepented sin; a gypsy dance this, accompanied by the mournful song of Boabdil, “The Last Sigh of the Moor.”  And suddenly, when the feelings of the spectators were melted to tender regret, a flash out of all this into a joyous defiance, a wooing of pleasure with smiling lips and swift feet, with the clash of cymbals and the quickened throb of the drum.  And so an end with the dawn of a new day.

It was not yet dawn, however, for the clocks were only striking three as the assembly, in winter coats and soft wraps, fluttered out to its carriages, chattering and laughing, with endless good-nights in the languages of France, Germany, and Spain.

The streets were as nearly deserted as they ever are; here and there a lumbering market-wagon from Jersey, an occasional street-car with its tinkling bell, rarer still the rush of a trembling train on the elevated, the voice of a belated reveler, a flitting female figure at a street corner, the roll of a livery hack over the ragged pavement.  But mainly the noise of the town was hushed, and in the sharp air the stars, far off and uncontaminated, glowed with a pure lustre.

Farther up town it was quite still, and in one of the noble houses in the neighborhood of the Park sat Edith Delancy, married not quite a year, listening for the roll of wheels and the click of a night-key.

II