As she stood, a pale blue lotus drooping above each hidden ear, a jeweled _menat_ in one hand, her coffee-colored and well oiled skin agleam with the reflected light of innumerable prismatic colors, she seemed less an animated human form than a figure carved, by Ptah the god of sculptors himself, from a block of glowing opal.
With her first perceptible motions the music rose to the major key. The time-beaters accentuated the broken rhythm more and more, while Tutīya, her heavy though sightless eyes glowing in their painted depths—she too had once been hailed a Theban favorite—burst ever and anon into the “Nubian cry,” that blood-stirring cry which acted as an incentive to her now posturing daughter.
In the center of the flowery carpet stood Nōfert-āri, languidly shaking her jeweled _menat_. Slowly she turned upon herself, the muscles of her lithe little body seeming to quiver in measure with the vibrant thrumming of the many stringed harps.
When again she faced the Egyptian monarch’s dais, unlike the impassive gaze of Pharaoh, her features seemed to have become transformed. The “King’s dance,” into which she now threw all her fascination, all her mesmeric charm and unrivaled ability, portrayed by movement of the body and gesture alone the meeting and stolen tryst of a pair of lovers.
At first she affected the love-smitten beauty, a coy beauty, mindful of her many charms.
Suddenly with a start, a pigeon-like coo of delight, she appeared to throw herself into her lover’s arms.
Again, with all the abandon of an artless coquetry, she stretched out her long arms and supple fingered hands as if to push him from her.
Finally, with one or two graceful little steps, accompanied by an arch glance over her shoulder, Nōfert-āri advanced to the very edge of the royal dais and commenced that portion of the dance for which she was so famed.
Into this every muscle of her supple body was forced to move in unison or singly as she willed. Her lustrous eyes gleamed beneath their darkened eyebrows, her expanded nostrils quivered, her full vermilioned lips were parted, the very veins in her forehead throbbed in measure with the refrain. As her supple arms, wrists, and hands played about her body with a wavelike—an indescribable motion—her jeweled bust and firm, yet flexible hips, swayed to the spasmodic movements natural to the dance.