The caoutchouc was drawing all London. Slightly more indecent than the
Salome dance, a shade less reticent than ragtime, it had driven the
tango out of existence. Nor, indeed, did anybody actually caoutchouc,
for the national dance of Paranoya contained three hundred and fifteen
recognized steps; but everybody tried to. A new revue, "Hullo,
Caoutchouc," had been produced with success. And the pioneer of the
dance, the peerless Maraquita, a native Paranoyan, still performed it
nightly at the music-hall where she had first broken loose.

The caoutchouc fascinated Roland Bleke. Maraquita fascinated him more.
Of all the women to whom he had lost his heart at first sight,
Maraquita had made the firmest impression upon him. She was what is
sometimes called a fine woman.

She had large, flashing eyes, the physique of a Rugby International
forward, and the agility of a cat on hot bricks.

There is a period of about fifty steps somewhere in the middle of the
three hundred and fifteen where the patient, abandoning the comparative
decorum of the earlier movements, whizzes about till she looks like a
salmon-colored whirlwind.

That was the bit that hit Roland.

Night after night he sat in his stage-box, goggling at Maraquita and
applauding wildly.

One night an attendant came to his box.