caught in a jewelled fillet, there hung a filmy veil of gold, half
revealing, half concealing, the smiling face behind. Trailing wisps of
golden gossamer hung from her beautiful arms. Her feet were bound with
golden sandals. And on her breast were roses--golden roses.

She was exquisite as a dream. He gazed and gazed upon her as one
entranced. The tumult of acclamation that greeted her swept by him
unheeded. He was conscious only of a passionate desire to fling back the
golden veil that covered her and see the laughing face behind. Its
elusiveness mocked him. She was like a sunbeam standing there, a
flitting, quivering shaft of light, too spiritual to be grasped fully,
almost too dazzling for the eye to follow.

The applause died down to a dead silence. Her audience watched her with
bated breath. Her dance was a thing indescribable. Courteney could think
of nothing but the flashing of morning sunlight upon running water to
the silver strains of a flute that was surely piped by Pan. He could not
follow the sparkling wonder of her. He felt dazed and strangely
exhilarated, almost on fire with this new, fierce attraction. It was as
if the very soul were being drawn out of his body. She called to him,
she lured him, she bewitched him.

When he had seen her before, he had been utterly out of sympathy. He had
scorned her charms, had felt an almost angry contempt for young Baron's
raptures. To him she had been a snake-woman, possessed of a fascination
which, to him, was monstrous and wholly incomprehensible. She had worn a
strange striped dress of green--tight-fitting, hideous he had deemed it.
Her face had been painted. He had been too near the stage, and she had
revolted him. Her dance had certainly been wonderful, sinuous, gliding,
suggestive--a perfectly conceived scheme of evil. And she had thought to