The scene changes to the dim night-enshrouded margin of the lake. With furious haste the genie enters, dragging relentlessly behind him the drooping figure of the Swan-maiden. Piteously she sinks upon the bank, as the wicked tyrant urges her onward. She turns a last entreating look backward, and at that very moment the flying figure of the Prince appears. He falls upon his knees before her and seeks to hold her with his hands. But the genie redoubles his force: the hapless Swan-maiden is wrenched from her lover’s grasp, and borne out of sight. The despairing Prince bows his head in mute and helpless agony. And while he yet kneels there, a white swan glides serenely across the surface of the lake. The prince sees it, and a dreadful thought clutches his heart. As the swan nears him he looks again--and lo, about its head, so delicately poised on the slender sinuous neck, is a golden crown! The young man staggers and falls dead. Smoothly the Queen Swan urges her placid way across the shining surface of the lake. [Illustration] ANNA PAVLOVA. Nothing can well be written about the Russian Ballet without some mention of Pavlova. For though that great dancer has not been associated with the troupe to whose performances the foregoing pages have been devoted, it is largely to her art that London owes the revived interest in ballet which paved the way for these later spectacles. Much has been written in adulation of Pavlova. Comparisons and metaphors have been well-nigh exhausted in enthusiastic attempts to convey a full appreciation of her dancing, and the result has sometimes been ridiculous. This is almost inevitable, however, for if Pavlova’s praises are to be sung at all, it must be in a word or else redundantly. Art so nearly perfect as hers permits of no analysis, and stultifies all efforts at exposition. So it happens that with Pavlova one can but state a bare opinion, and leave her art to speak for itself. Mere description is impossible, since her method is subjective rather than objective. London has had no opportunity of seeing her take part in a concerted ballet, at least of that dramatic type in which the art of the performers is subservient to the action in which they are involved; and the individual dances in which she is chiefly seen are to be regarded not so much as occasions for impersonation as opportunities and means of self-expression. As already has been said of Nijinsky, the art of Pavlova is something more than merely imitative; it is creative, her genius acting upon, shaping, and impressing with the stamp of her own individuality the material selected.