Loie Fuller devoted the next few months to developing the novel effects which she had discovered and to inventing an accompaniment of slow, gliding steps such as would best accord with the involutions of the skirt rising and falling upon the air. The invention of the Serpentine Dance coincided with the discovery of electricity as a method of lighting the stage. Until that time gas alone had been used. Loie Fuller immediately saw the possibilities of the new scientific illumination, and with the aid of a few friends she devised a means by which the effect of vivid sunshine could be obtained through the use of powerful electric lights placed in front of reflectors. Then various experiments with colour were tried; for the white light of the electricity were substituted different shades of reds, greens, purples, yellows, blues, by the combination of which innumerable and wonderful rainbow-like effects of colour were obtained. Played upon by the multitudinous hues, the diaphanous silk gave an impression of startling originality and beauty. Coming at a time when the artistic lighting of the stage was scarcely studied at all, the riot of colour created a sensation. Nothing like it had been seen before. The old-fashioned limelight, the flickering gas-jets, the smoking red and blue flames dear to the Christmas pantomime, paled before this discovery of science which apparently possessed inexhaustible possibilities as a stage illuminant. Loie Fuller introduced her new dance with its accessories to the variety stage in the States, where she soon became famous. But it was not until she came to Europe that her performance received its full meed of appreciation, not as a mere raree-show sandwiched in between the turns of acrobats and performing seals, but as a thing of intrinsic beauty. She visited first Germany and then Paris. The Parisians, who have the habit in common with the ancient Athenians of spending their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing, welcomed the novelty of her dancing and quickly adopted her as “La Loie.” Her début at the Folies Bergère was a triumph. To the accompaniment of the tinkling strains of Gillet’s “Loin du Bal”--a melody inevitably associated with Loie Fuller’s dancing--the dazzling figure of light suddenly shone out of the gloom of the darkened stage like some mysteriously illuminated flower, fluttering its petals in the breeze. On batons held in each hand were hung yards upon yards of shimmering gossamer fabric. The least movement of the wand sent the airy mass floating in undulating billows and twisting in streaming spirals. And as the multitudinous moving forms succeeded one another, the light from below shifted through all the combinations of the colours of the rainbow. “La Loie” immediately became the rage. The management of the Folies Bergère engaged her for three years at the handsome salary of two hundred pounds a week--an engagement which unfortunately circumstances