As the kaleidoscope of the first dance sifted and shifted its pattern of
color, three men stood by the door, scanning the disguised figures with
watchful eyes.
One of the three was fantastically arrayed as a cannibal chief, in brown
fleshings, with cuffs upon his ankles, gaudy decorations about his neck,
and huge rings in nose and ears.
The second man was a Bedouin: a camel-driver of the Libyan Desert. From
the black horsehair circlet on his temples a turban-scarf fell to his
shoulders. He was wrapped in a brown cashmere cloak which dropped
domino-like to his ankles. Shaggy brows ran in an unbroken line from
temple to temple, masking his eyes, while a fierce mustache and beard
obliterated the contour of his lower face. His cheek-bones and forehead
showed, under some dye, as dark as leather, and as his gaze searchingly
raked the crowds, he fingered a string of Moslem prayer-beads.
The third man was conspicuous in ordinary dress. Save for the decoration
of the Order of Takavo, suspended by a crimson ribbon on his
shirt-front, and the Star of Galavia, on the left lapel of his coat,
there was no break in the black and white scheme of his evening clothes.
Von Ritz had told the truth. He was not disguised. He stood, his arms
folded on his breast, towering above the Fiji Islander, possibly a
quarter of an inch taller than the Bedouin. A half-amused smile lurked
in his steady eyes--the smile of unwavering brows and dispassionately
steady mouth-line.
The cannibal chief waved his hand. "Bright the lamps shone o'er fair
women and brave men!" he declaimed, in a disguised voice; then scowled
about him villainously, remembering that an affable quoting of Lord
Byron is incompatible with the qualities of a man-eating savage.
The Bedouin gravely inclined his head. "Allahu Akbar!" he responded,
in a soft voice.
Suddenly the caravan driver commenced a hurried and zigzag course across
the crowded floor. The eyes of Colonel Von Ritz indolently followed.
Through a low-silled window a girl had just entered, carrying herself
with the untrammeled freedom of some wild thing, erect, poised from the
waist, rhythmic in motion. Her walk was like the scansion of good verse.
The Bedouin caught the grace before the ensemble of costume met his eye.
It was in harmony.
She wore a silk skirt to the ankles, and about her waist and hips was
bound the yellow and red sash of the Spanish gipsy, tightly knotted, and
falling at its tasseled ends. Her arms were bare to the elbows, and gay
with bracelets; her hair fell from her forehead and temples, dropping
over her shoulders in two ribbon bound braids. A tall, gray-cowled monk,
whose military bearing gave the lie to his cassock, a Spanish grandee,
and a fool in motley saw her at the same moment and hurried to intercept
her, but with a slide which carried him a quarter of the way across the
floor the Bedouin arrived first, and before the others had come up he
was drifting away with her in the tide of the dancers.