Breasting the human eddy caused by these, Patrine and her party passed the barrier, climbed a flight of shallow gilt marble stairs carpeted with pink plush and decorated with roses and tree-ferns and reached the elevated promenade. Set within the circumference of the outer one, it commanded a complete view of the circular ball-room, to whose level descended from it at intervals yet other flights of broad gilt stairs, similarly carpeted and flower-decked for the convenience of those who wished to join the dancers, or return from the ball-room to the level of the promenade. The revels were in full swing. Standing upon the brink, looking down as into a cockpit, you saw Patrine, superb in her false diadem and mock ermines, leaning her bare white hand upon a velvet-covered rail. At first she could only make out a giddying whirl of arms and heads and shoulders. Presently, the picture began to clear. To the wail, clang and clash of strange, discordant, exotic music, rendered by an orchestra of coloured performers, two wide circles of dancers rhythmically spun. The floors they danced on were set at different levels, and rotated automatically,—each floor revolving in a different direction. Coloured lights, flung at intervals from reflectors in the ceiling, conveyed to Patrine the impression of staring down upon the whirling planes of a huge gyroscopic top. Only the central space of shining parquet was void within the double circle of gyrating dancers. A crash from the orchestra and three couples, oddly costumed, leaped suddenly out upon the floor. Patrine could not make out where they had come from. They appeared, and there was a slight commotion. A hedge of applauding spectators, four or five deep, formed about the central, stationary patch of parquet. The music changed, the six Brazilians began the famous dance. They were not beautiful to look at it seemed to Patrine, the men, familiarly styled by voices in the crowd as Lauro, Pedro, and Herculano, being undersized, sleek-headed, lithe and sallow, attired in faultlessly fitting evening dress-coats, white vests, black satin knee-breeches, black silks, and buckled pumps. They wore shallow collars of curious cut, lawn-frilled shirts and wide black neckties. Their female companions were swarthy as Indians, even through their paint, and plain of feature. But their superb hair and eyes, the rounded grace of hip and waist and limb, the slenderness of throat and wrist and ankle, testified, like their tiny feet and high-arched insteps, to a strain of Spanish blood. "La Rivadavia, Alexandrina, and Silvana," the eager spectators named them. They wore transparent sheaths, and brief, oddly _bouffante_ overskirts, like flounced muslin lamp-shades with a boldly suggestive forward tilt. They began the dance with some familiar Tango figures. The poses, the approaches, the hesitations, were well known to Patrine.