"Those pearls!" Stonehouse heard a man behind him say loudly. "Prince
Frederick gave them to her. And then he shot himself. They belonged to
the family. He had no right, of course, but she wanted them."
He could feel Cosgrave stir impatiently.
It went on, as it seemed to him, for an incredible length of time. It
was like a prairie fire that spread and blazed up, higher and brighter.
And there was no escape. He had a queer conviction that his was the only
static spirit in the whole theatre, that secretly, in their hearts, the
audience had flung themselves into the riot with her, the oldest and
staidest of them, as perhaps they had often wanted to do when they heard
a jolly tune like that. It was artless, graceless. One only needed to
let oneself go.
"I'm Gyp Labelle,
Come dance with me."
The jaded disgust and weariness were gone. Something had come into the
theatre that had not been there before. Nothing mattered either so much
or so little. The main business was to have a good time somehow--not to
worry or care.
She had whirled catherine-wheel fashion, head over heels from end to end
of the stage. The long-haired youth swept the hair from his hot,
blue-jowled face in time to catch her, and they stood side by side, she
with her thin arms stretched up straight in a gesture of triumph, her
lips still parted in that curiously empty, expectant smile.
Then it was over. Once the curtain rose to perfunctory applause.
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