The keen animal senses of the faun detect some strange presence near at hand, and peering from his coign of vantage he perceives the nymphs. Such beings are beyond his ken, but the sight of them awakens a vague interest. He yields to a subtle attraction, and descending from his perch approaches the intruders. [Illustration] The pantomime, if such it can be called, between the nymphs and faun is quite impossible to describe. Such gesture as is sparingly used is strictly conventionalised, and the faces of the performers remain blankly expressionless. Nothing is allowed to detract from the stiff formality of their aspect. For all that, the pantomime is curiously expressive. In his uncouth way, prompted by impulses only dimly comprehended, the faun seeks to woo the nymphs. They are startled and flee, but return almost as soon as they are gone, only to dart off again in sudden alarm. Curiosity alternates with shyness and fear. Only once are the quaint, indeed laughable, angular movements varied, when the faun, with quite electrifying effect, makes a single bound into the air. Eventually discretion overcomes the valorous curiosity of the nymphs. The last, and most attracted, flees away. The faun is left disconsolate and puzzled, his slow turbid brain striving to grasp the meaning and nature of the radiant creatures that so lately stirred his appetites. Nothing remains of them save a gauzy scarf, dropped in her flight by the last, at which he stares long and stupidly. At length he picks it up, and holding it wonderingly in his hands, slowly regains his rocky perch. A mysterious influence emanates from the scarf, and yielding himself to it, the faun sinks into voluptuous dreams. “L’Après-Midi d’un Faune” has earned a great popular success, but it is chiefly a success of curiosity. It is novel, it is quaint, it is amusing; but whether it is properly artistic depends upon the interpretation put upon that word. The whole thing is brilliantly clever, a _tour de force_ on the part of Nijinsky, and considered as such one has nothing for it but praise. But as an attempt to vivify plastic art it fails, for it deliberately adopts conventions and restrictions which are proper to the latter, but were never intended to govern the moving human form. Merely to endow with movement a creation of plastic art seems a futile and superfluous purpose, even if possible of achievement; really to vivify is the province of the dancer’s art, which in this “ballet” is crippled by false limitations.