“Draw no nearer.  Only stand and watch.”

She had a great blue flower in her bosom that heaved and fell for proof of her own emotion.  Hasamurti’s hand was trembling as she nestled closer, and Tess felt her own pulsing to quick heart-beats as she clasped the girl’s.

Yasmini left them, and walked alone to the very edge of the pond, where she stood still for several minutes, apparently gazing at her own reflection in the moonlit water—­or perhaps listening.  There was no sign of any one else, nor sound of footfall.  Then, as if the reflection satisfied, or she had heard some whisper meant for her and none else, she began to dance, moving very slowly in the first few rhythmic steps, resembling a water-goddess, the clinging silk displaying her young outline as she bent and swayed.

She might have been watching her reflection still, so close she danced to the water’s edge with her back turned to the moon.  But presently the dance grew quicker, and extended arms that glistened in the light like ivory increased the sinuous perfection of each pose.  Still there was nothing wild in it—­nothing but the very spirit of the moonlight, beautiful and kind and full of peace.  She moved now around the water, in a measured cadence that by some unfathomable witchery of her devising conveyed a thought of maidenhood and modesty.  It dawned on Tess, who watched her spell-bound, that there was not one immodest thought in all Yasmini’s throng of moods, but only a scorn of all immodesty and its pretensions.  And whether that was art, or sheer expression of the truth within her rather than a recognition of the truth without, Tess never quite determined; for it is easier to judge spoken word and unexpected deed than to see the thought behind it.  That night Yasmini’s mood was simpler and less unseemly than the very virgin dress she wore.

Presently she danced more swiftly, making no sound, so phantom-light and graceful that the rhythm of her movement carried her with scarce a touch to earth.  That was strength as well as art, but the art made strength seem spiritual power to float on air.  Gaiety grew now into her cadences—­ the utter joy of being young.  She seemed to revel in a sense of buoyancy that could lift her above all the grim deceptions of the world of wrath and iron, and make her, like the moonlight, all-kind, all-conquering.  Three times round the pond she leapt and gamboled in an ecstasy of youth undisillusioned.

Then the dance changed, though there was yet in it the heart of gaiety.  There moved now in the steps a sense of mystery—­a consciousness of close infinity unfolding, far more subtly signified than by the clumsy shift of words.  And she welcomed all the mystery—­greeted it with outstretched arms—­was glad of it, and eager-impetuous to know the new worlds and the ways undreamed of.  Minute after minute, rhapsody on rhapsody, she wooed the near, untouchable delights that, like the moonbeams, seem but empty nothing when the drudges seize them for their palaces of mud.