Her eyes shone like fire-flies.
"I thought you preferred dancing by yourself," she retorted.
"Why ?" he said.
She laughed a soft, provocative laugh, and suddenly, without any warning, the cloak had fallen from her shoulders and she was dancing.
There in the starlight, white-robed and wonderful, she danced as, it seemed to the man's fascinated senses, no human had ever danced before.
She was like a white flame--a darting, fiery essence, soundless, all-absorbing, all-entrancing.
He watched her with pent breath, bound by the magic of her, caught, as it were, into the innermost circle of her being, burning in answer to her fire, yet so curiously enthralled as to be scarcely aware of the ever-mounting, ever-spreading heat.

She was like a mocking spirit, a will-o'-the-wisp, luring him, luring him--whither?
The dance quickened, became a passionate whirl, so that suddenly he seemed to see a bright-winged insect caught in an endless web and battling for freedom.

He almost saw the silvery strands of that web floating like gossamer in the starlight.
And then, with well-nigh miraculous suddenness, the struggle was over and the insect had darted free.

He saw her flash away, and found the veranda empty.
Her cloak lay at his feet.

He stooped with an odd sense of giddiness and picked it up.