"This orgie of mad people is a wonderful sight," Verisschenzko said, as he stood by her side. "Paris has lost all good taste and sense of the fitness of things. Look! the women who are the most expert in the wriggle of the tango are mostly over forty years old! Do you see that one in the skin-tight pink robe? She is a grandmother! All are painted--all are feverish--all would be young! It is ever thus when a country is on the eve of a cataclysm--it is a dance Macabre." Amaryllis turned, startled, to look at him, and she saw that his eyes were full of melancholy, and not mocking as they usually were. "A dance Macabre! You do not approve of these tangoes then?" He gave a small shrug of his shoulders, which was his only form of gesticulation. "Tangoes--or one steps--I neither approve nor disapprove--dancing should all have its meaning, as the Greek Orchises had. These dances to the Greeks would have meant only one thing--I do not know if they would have wished this to take place in public, they were an aesthetic and refined people, so I think not. We Russians are the only so-called civilised nation who are brutal enough for that; but we are far from being civilised really. Orgies are natural to us--they are not to the French or the English. Savage sex displays for these nations are an acquired taste, a proof of vicious decay, the middle note of the end." "I learned the tango this Spring--it is charming to dance," Amaryllis protested. She was a little uncomfortable--the subject, much as she was interested in the Russian's downright views, she found was difficult to discuss. "I am sure you did--you counted time--you moved your charming form this way and that--and you had not the slightest idea of anything in it beyond anxiety to keep step and do the thing well! Yes--is it not so?" Amaryllis laughed--this was so true! "What an incredibly false sham it all is!" he went on. "Started by niggers or Mexicans for what it obviously means, and brought here for respectable mothers, and wives, and girls to perform. For me a woman loses all charm when she cheapens the great mystery-ceremonies of love--" "Then you won't dance it with me?" Amaryllis challenged smilingly--she would not let him see that she was cast down. "I do so want to dance!" His eyes grew fierce. "I beg of you not! I desire to keep the picture I have made of you since we met--later I shall dance it myself with a suitable partner, but I do not want you mixed with this tarnished herd." Amaryllis answered with dignity: "If I thought of it as you do I should not want to dance it at all." She was aggrieved that her expressed desire might have made him hold her less high--"and you have taken all the bloom from my butterfly's wing--I will never enjoy dancing it again--let us go and sit down."