“That is well! Your dresses shall be brought. This evening in the refectory after the meal. If you wish music--one can place a piano. Sister Mathilde is a good musician.” “Music--some simple dances. Madame, could I smoke?” “Certainly, my daughter. I will have cigarettes brought to you.” The dancer stretched out her hand. Between her own thin hands the Mother Superior felt its supple warmth. To-morrow it would be cold and stiff! “_Au revoir_! then, my daughter....” “The dancer will dance for us!” This was the word. One waited, expectant, as for a miracle. One placed the piano; procured music; sat eating the evening meal--whispering. The strangeness of it! The intrusion! The little gay ghosts of memories! Ah! the dramatic, the marvellous event! Soon the meal was finished; the tables cleared, removed; against the wall on the long benches sixty grey white-coifed figures waited--in the centre the Mother Superior, at the piano Sister Mathilde. The little elderly Sister came first; then, down the long whitened refectory, the dancer swaying slowly over the dark-oak floor. Every head was turned--alone the Mother Superior sat motionless. If only it did not put notions into some light heads! The dancer wore a full skirt of black silk, she had silvery shoes and stockings, round her waist was a broad tight network of gold, over her bust tight silvery tissue, with black lace draped; her arms were bare; a red flower was set to one side of her black hair; she held a black and ivory fan. Her lips were just touched with red, her eyes just touched with black; her powdered face was like a mask. She stood in the very centre, with eyes cast down. Sister Mathilde began to play. The dancer lifted her fan. In that dance of Spain she hardly moved from where she stood, swaying, shivering, spinning, poised; but her eyes darted from this face to that of the long row of faces, where so many feelings were expressed--curiosity and doubt, pleasure, timidity, horror, sympathy. Sister Mathilde ceased playing. A little murmur broke along the line of nuns, and the dancer smiled. Sister Mathilde began again to play. For a moment the dancer listened as if to catch the rhythm of music strange to her; then her feet moved, her lips parted, sweet and gay she was, like a butterfly, without a care; and on the lips of the watching faces smiles came, and little murmurs of pleasure escaped. The Mother Superior sat without moving, her lips pressed together, her fingers interlaced. Images from the past kept starting out, and falling back, like figures from some curious old musical box. She was remembering her lover killed in the Franco-Prussian war, her entrance into religion all that time ago. This figure from the heathen world, with the red flower in her black hair, the whitened face, the sweetened eyes, stirred a yearning for her own gay pulses, before they had seemed to die, and she brought them to the church to bury them.