patterned in red, and they were covered, as with breastplates, by many silver-coin necklaces. One dancer was a tall, sinuous creature, with a markedly Jewish or Egyptian face, who did the serpentine dance of Cairo cafés, and bent backward to pick up a rupee from the ground with her eyelids. Every step was marked by the jingle and clash of her bracelets and anklets, and this serpent of old Jumna, after one lively measure, paused and spread out her crinkled draperies in great butterfly-wings behind her in a "Loie Fuller pose" as old as Delhi. We had lamps and more lamps brought, eyes and turbans uncounted gathered in the dusk, and, inspired by native approval and tourist rupees, the skirt dance went on through many figures.
We sent runners to find them the next morning. We wanted them to dance at noon, that we might turn a battery of kodaks upon them. "Those are very poor, common dancers," said the bearer, scornfully. "I will get very splendid nautches, in silk and kincob saris and very splendid jewels, in 'niklasses' and 'griddles' of rubies and pearls." But we wanted only those same dancers in their cheap clothes and silver necklaces and girdles; and it took insistence to get them. They came; and in the sunlight their silver and glass, brass and lac jewelry were as gems, and our enthusiasm was greater than that of the night before. They danced their best, held their poses interminably for the time exposures, and we reeled film away so recklessly that the hotel manager said: "Oh, madam, if you have so many plates to spare, won't you take my baby?"
