“There, on that evening when I saw her rehearse Salome in everyday clothes, without costume, her glasses over her eyes, measuring her steps, outlining in her dark robe the seductive and suggestive movements, which she will produce to-morrow in her brilliant costume, I seemed to be watching a wonderful _impresaria_, manager of her troupe as well as mistress of the audience, giving her directions to the orchestra, to the mechanicians, with an exquisite politeness, smiling in face of the inevitable nerve-racking circumstances, always good-natured and making herself obeyed, as all real leaders do, by giving orders in a tone that sounds like asking a favour. “‘Will you be good enough to give us a little more light? Yes. That is it. Thank you.’ “On the stage another woman in street dress, with a note-book in her hand, very amiable, too, and very exact in her directions and questions, took the parts of John the Baptist, half nude, of Herod in his purple mantle, of Herodias magnificent under her veils, and assumed the function of _regisseur_ (one cannot yet say _regisserice_). And I was struck by the smoothness of all this performance of a complicated piece, with its movements and various changes. These two American women, without raising their voices, quietly but with the absolute brevity of practical people (distrust at the theatre those who talk too much), these two women with their little hands fashioned for command were managing the rehearsal as an expert Amazon drives a restive horse. “Then I had the immense pleasure of seeing this Salome in everyday clothes dance her steps without the illusion created by theatrical costume, with a simple strip of stuff, sometimes red and sometimes green, for the purpose of studying the reflections on the moving folds under the electric light. It was Salome dancing, but a Salome in a short skirt, a Salome with a jacket over her shoulders, a Salome in a tailor-made dress, whose hands--mobile, expressive, tender or threatening hands, white hands, hands like the tips of birds’ wings--emerged from the clothes, imparted to them all the poetry of the dance, of the seductive dance or the dance of fright, the infernal dance or the dance of delight. The gleam from the footlights reflected itself on the dancer’s glasses and blazed there like flame, like fugitive flashes, and nothing could be at once more fantastic and more charming than these twists of the body, these caressing motions, these hands, again, these dream hands waving there before Herod, superb in his theatrical mantle, and observing the sight of the dance idealised in the everyday costume.