The Golden House

e end of the century is a time of license if not of decadence. The situation had its own piquancy, partly in the surprise of some of th

ical beauty of the Greeks, from Boston, were there; fair women from Washington, whose charms make the reputation of many a newspaper correspondent; spirited stars of official and diplomatic life, who have moments of longing to shine in some more languorous material paradise, had made a hasty flitting to be present at the ceremony, sustained by a slight feeling of bravado in making this exceptional descent. But the favored hundred spectators were

alls a hundred years ago, the faint perfume of a scented society of ladies and gallants; a skeleton scarcely less fantastic than the draped wooden model near it; heavy rugs of Daghestan and Persia, making the footfalls soundless on the floor; a fountain tinkling in a thicket of japonicas and azaleas; the stems of palmettoes, with their branches waving in the obscurity overhead; points of light here and there where a shaded lamp shone on a single red rose in a blue Granada v

cleared space, in a crescent, knelt or sat upon the rugs a couple of rows of men in evening dress; behind them, seated in chairs, a group of ladies, whose white shoulders and arms and animated faces flashed out in the semi-obscurity; and in their rear stood a crowd of spectators-beautiful young

ash of light from the rear of the room inundates the white canvas, and suddenl

e Spanis

t be-the old serpent dance of the Nile, or the posturing of decorous courtship when the olives are purple in the time of the grape harvest? Her head, wreathed with coils of black hair, a red rose behind the left ear, is thrown back. The eyes flash, there is a snakelike movement of the limbs, the music hastens slowly in unison with the quickening pulse, the body palpitates, seems to flash invitation like the eyes, it turns, it twists, the neck is thrust forward, it is drawn in, while the limbs move still slowly, tentatively; suddenly the body from the waist up seems to twist round, with the waist as a pivot, in a flash of athletic vigor, the music quickens, the arms move more rapidly to the click of the heated castenets, the st

the moment a distinction. The young ladies wondered

of Donnycastle always shakes ha

ty in an evening dress that she would have condemned

sedate man of thirty-five, with t

"I have always had a curiosity to k

rigin, like all dancing, was religious. The fault I find with it is that it la

he reason our religion lacks seriousness? We are in Lent

keeps you up till three o'clock in the

not expect to assist at what New Englanders call an 'eve

is an ancient form of worship. Virtue and

! It makes religion s

as grav

levitation. You are upsetting all my ideas. I shall not

rry that the dancing w

ffed under the blessing of sparkling eyes, young girls, almond-eyed for the occasion, in the c

wife did

e bow, before he raised his glass. And then ad

ittle-Jack thought he had never seen her look so daz

didn't exactly see his way out of the dilemma-"Edith is a

t. "Only I think there are half a dozen women in the room who could do it be

the depths of the Orient. But, on the whole, I'm glad-" Jac

in. I quite understand

dancer, warmed with wine and adulation, took a bolder pose, and, as her limbs began to move, sang a wild Moorish melody in a shrill voice, action and words flowing together

sy dance this, accompanied by the mournful song of Boabdil, "The Last Sigh of the Moor." And suddenly, when the feelings of the spectators were melted to tender regret, a flash out of all

bly, in winter coats and soft wraps, fluttered out to its carriages, chattering an

rer still the rush of a trembling train on the elevated, the voice of a belated reveler, a flitting female figure at a street corner, the roll of a livery hac

n the neighborhood of the Park sat Edith Delancy, married not quite