THE DA.\CE L\ THE TEXT 199
many ways anticipate the technique of the Isadora
Duncan school. Now there was silence in the tent.
Only the music swelled and died in fitful waves,
thrilling our nerves with melodies sub-acid or
sickly sweet, and sudden chords that trembled on
the air, soared up and, failing, trembled into
silence, only to rise again with feverish rapture and
die out on a ripple of silvery trills. The dancer fol-
lowed the subtle rhythms of the music with all her
body ; with sinuous undulations of her arms and
naked hips swelling and dwindling under the
gauzy veils, with sparkling toes and jangling wrists.
Her arms flung out before her, hands all but touch-
ing, knees pressed tight together, she drummed on
the carpet with frenzied feet; or, running swiftly
forward liana-lithe, she seemed to proffer us her
body, only to retract it in a flash, with an enigmatic
laugh. Now she no longer moved this way or that,
only her feet pounded on the carpet in accelerating
rhythms, her features working \vith passionate
excitement, strained to the breaking-point of par-
oxysm ; her breath came in panting gasps and
faster, faster, to the shrill, stuttering music her little
breasts twitched under the pattering beads. Then
suddenly the tiny bells fell silent, a cloud of drapery
veiled the golden limbs . . . and the blue arena
was empty. There was no clapping, but the tumult
of orgiastic cries told more than any plaudits.
Whisky and champagne went round again. The
sugary perfumes of the flowers massed in the corners
of the tent was heady as the fiercest alcohol. I saw
the Maharaja standing, a burly white figure, in a
patch of shadow on the far side of the tent. I heard
loud cries breaking out around him. All the
reivers of the border marches, tall chieftains black
and bearded like Persian satraps, were on their feet