But the throbbing rhythm has died away: the dream is nearing an end. Swiftly the phantom rises, and makes as if to go. Tenderly it stoops over the fair face of the sleeper, and imprints a single kiss upon her brow. The music draws to a close, the appointed hour inexorably approaches. Longingly the phantom lingers, till a fear assails one, lest it tarry too long. But at the last moment it turns, and with a swift run, a magic leap through the open window, vanishes--is gone at the very instant when the music ends. There is a brief pause. The sleeper stirs and wakes. She starts from the chair and casts a startled look towards the window through which her spectral visitant has fled. But no form, however shadowy, intercepts the moonbeams which lie athwart the garden. Dazed, she turns her eyes towards the floor. There lies the crumpled rose which dropped from her grasp as she fell asleep. At sight of it she recollects her thoughts: full memory of her dream so lately passed comes flooding into her mind. She picks the rose from the floor, and as she presses it to her lips, turns wonderingly to the open window and the still garden beyond. [Illustration: NARCISSE] NARCISSE. MYTHOLOGICAL DRAMA BY LÉON BAKST. MUSIC BY N. TCHEREPNIN. DANCES BY MICHEL FOKINE. SCENERY AND COSTUMES DESIGNED BY LÉON BAKST. Without reference to “Hélène de Sparte” and “Daphnis et Chlöe,” two ballets in their repertoire which the Russians seem chary of presenting in London, it would be unfair to say that the Greek view of life baffles them. But their performance of “Narcisse,” despite its many beauties, suggests no very confident or happy exploration into classic mythology. One fancies their temperament is too restless, too sensuous, to appreciate the cool, almost austere, repose of Greek ideas. “Nothing in excess” is hardly a motto to appeal to the creators of “Scheherazade,” “Cléopâtre” and “L’Oiseau de Feu.” As a result their treatment is too florid, and at times clumsy. It is not so much that they do not know when to stop, as that they fail to strike the right note in starting. The scene is a sylvan glade containing a shrine of the goddess Pomona. There is a spring beside the shrine which feeds a glassy pool and gives that cool humidity to the air which Léon Bakst has well suggested by the luxuriance of the green vegetation all around. The glade is shrouded in mysterious twilight when the curtain rises, and the queer forms of sylvan imps are dimly seen, frolicking to the woodland music of a flute. The orchestral accompaniment is charming, but it is unfortunate that the growing light should presently destroy illusion, and reveal what had seemed true elfin sprites as dancers clad in cloth overalls and wearing grotesque masks. One resents the needless clumsiness.