Louder and louder swelled the tumult. It was evident that nothing but a
repetition of the wonder-dance would content the audience. They yelled
themselves hoarse for it; and when, light as air, incredibly swift, the
green Dragon-Fly darted back, they outdid themselves in the madness of
their welcome. The noise seemed to shake the building.

Only the man in the front row with the iron-grey eyes and iron-hard
mouth made no movement or sound of any sort. He merely watched with
unchanging intentness the face that gleamed, ashen-white, above the
shimmering metallic green tights that clothed the dancer's slim body.

The noise ceased as the wild tarantella proceeded. There fell a deep
hush, broken only by the silver notes of a flute played somewhere behind
the curtain. The dancer's movements were wholly without sound. The
quivering, whirling feet scarcely seemed to touch the floor, it was a
dance of inspiration, possessing a strange and irresistible fascination,
a weird and meteoric rush, that held the onlookers with bated breath.

It lasted for perhaps two minutes, that intense and trancelike
stillness; then, like, a stone flung into glassy depths, a woman's
scream rudely shattered it, a piercing, terror-stricken scream that
brought the rapt audience back to earth with a shock as the liquid music
of the flute suddenly ceased.

"Fire!" cried the voice. "Fire! Fire!"

There was an instant of horrified inaction, and in that instant a tongue
of flame shot like a fiery serpent through the closed curtains behind
the dancer. In a moment the cry was caught up and repeated in a dozen
directions, and even as it went from mouth to mouth the safety-curtain