friends, were seated at the end of the room opposite the bayadères,
the signal was given, and the music commenced with a soft and
indescribably languorous air. One of the bayadères rose with a lithe
and supple movement of the body not comparable to anything save the
slow separating of a white scud from the main cloud which one sees
on a summer's day high up in the cirrus regions. She was attired in a
short jacket, a scarf, and a profusion of floating stuff that seemed
at once to hide and expose. Presently I observed that her jewelry was
glittering as it does not glitter when one is still, yet her feet
were not moving. I also heard a gentle tinkling from her anklets and
bracelets. On regarding her more steadily, I saw that her whole body
was trembling in gentle and yet seemingly intense vibrations, and she
maintained this singular agitation while she assumed an attitude
of much grace, extending her arms and spreading out her scarf in
gracefully-waving curves. In these slow and languid changes of
posture, which accommodated themselves to the music like undulations
in running water to undulations in the sand of its bed, and in the
strange trembling of her body, which seemed to be an inner miniature
dance of the nerves, consisted her entire performance. She intensified
the languid nature of her movements by the languishing coquetries of
her enormous black eyes, from which she sent piercing glances
between half-closed lids. It was a dance which only southern peoples
understand. Any one who has ever beheld the _slow juba_ of the negro
in the Southern United States will recognize its affinity to these
movements, which, apparently deliberate, are yet surcharged with
intense energy and fire.

[Illustration: MEWATI DANCING-GIRL.]

Her performance being finished, the bayadère was succeeded by others,