her toes were not very supple, her legs were not practised in all possible contortions; she understood nothing of the art of dancing as Vestris teaches it, but she danced as Nature teaches; her whole soul was in time with her steps; not only did her feet dance, but her whole form and face. She often became pale, almost deadly pale; her eyes opened spectrally wide, yearning and pain convulsed her lips, while her black hair, which in smooth ovals inclosed her temples, moved like two flapping ravens' wings. It was indeed no classic dance, but neither was it romantic in the sense in which a young Frenchman of the school of Eugene Renduel would explain the word. It had neither anything Mediæval nor Venetian, nor distorted and deformed, nor Macabre—there was in it neither moonshine nor incest. It was a dance which did not attempt to amuse by outward phases of motion, but by phases which seemed to be words of a strange language which would say strange things. But what did the dance say? I could not understand it, however passionately it pleaded. I only felt that here and there something terribly, shudderingly painful was meant. I who in other things grasp so readily the key of a mystery, could not solve this danced enigma, and that I sought in vain to find the sense was the fault of the music, which certainly sought to lead me astray, which cunningly
