Suddenly the massed orchestras burst into an anachronistic two-step. The illusion was shattered; the ball was on! Assistants ran up and gathered together the glittering débris and pushed chariot, papier maché elephant and camel and palanquin through the two entrances; god seized goddess, heroes nabbed nymphs; all Olympus and the outlying suburban heavens began to foot it madly to the magic summons of George Cohan.
Under the blaze of lights the throng on the dancing floor swirled into glittering whirlpools and ripples, brilliant as sunset on a restless sea. The gaily costumed audience, too, was rising everywhere and leaving seats and stalls and boxes to join the dancing multitudes below.
Before he descended, Cleland saw Grismer and Stephanie dancing together, the girl looking up over her shoulder as though still searching the tiers of seats above for somebody expected.
Before he reached the floor he began to meet old friends and acquaintances, more or less recognizable under strange head-dresses and in stranger raiment.
He ran into Badger Spink, as a fawn in the spotted skin of a pard, his thick hair on end and two little horns projecting.
"Hello," he said briefly; "you back? Glad to see you—excuse me, but I’m chasing a little devil of a dryad——"
He caught sight of her as he spoke; the girl shrieked and fled and after her galloped the fawn, intent on capture.
Clarence Verne, colourless of skin in his sombrely magnificent Egyptian dress, extended an Egyptian hand to him—the hand he remembered so well, with its deep, pictographic cleft between forefinger and thumb.
"When did _you_ come back, Cleland?" he inquired in that listless, drugged voice of his. "To-day? Hope we’ll see something of you now.... Do you know that Nautch girl—the one in orange and silver? She’s Claudia Gwynn, the actress. She hasn’t got much on, has she? Can the Ball des Quat’z beat this for an unconcerned revelation of form divine?"
"I don’t think it can," said Cleland, looking at a bacchante whose raiment seemed to be voluminous enough. The only trouble was that it was also transparent.
"Nobody cares any more," remarked Verne in his drowsy voice. "The restless sex has had its way. It always has been mad to shed its clothes in public. First it danced barefooted, then it capered barelegged. Loie, Isadora and Ruth St. Denis between ’em started the fashion; Bakst went ’em one better; then society tore off its shoulder-straps and shortened its petticoats; and the Australian swimming Venus stripped for the screen. It’s all right; I don’t care. Only it’s a bore to have one’s imagination become atrophied from disuse.... If I can find a girl thoroughly covered I’d be interested."