that is danced on East End pavements to the music of the concertina.
In the very abandonment of burlesque Poppy remained an artist, and her
dance preserved the gravity of the original ballet, designed for
performance on a flagstone. Now it unfolded; it burst its bounds; it
was a rhythmic stampede. Louder and louder, her clicking heels beat
the furious time; higher and higher her dexterous toes flew to her
feathers that bowed to meet them, and when her last superhuman kick
sent her hat flying, and the Humorist caught it on his head, they had
brought the house down.

Rickman went out to the bar, where he found Dicky Pilkington, and at
Dicky's suggestion he endeavoured to quench with brandy and soda his
inextinguishable thirst.

He returned to the storm and glare of the ballet, the last appearance
of that small, incarnate genius of Folly. There were other dancers,
but he saw none but her. He knew every pose and movement of her body,
from her first tentative, preluding pirouette, to her last moon-struck
dance, when she tossed her tall grenadier's cap to the back of the
stage, and still spinning, shook out her hair, and flung herself
backwards, till it streamed and eddied with the whirlwind of her
dance. In her fantastic dress (she wore her colours, the red and
black) her very womanhood had vanished, she was a mere insignificant
morsel of flesh and blood, inspired by the dizzy, reckless Fury of the
foot-lights.

There was a noise of many boots beating the floor of the house; it
grew into a thick, solid body of sound, torn at intervals by a
screaming whistle from the galleries. Someone up there shouted her
name--"Poppy--Poppy Grace!" and Rickman shivered.