He moved softly towards
the open window from which the sound seemed to proceed.
Elsie was alone in the room, dancing one of those wild Moorish
fandangos, such as a _matador_ hot from the _Plaza de Toros_ of Seville
or Madrid might love to lie and gaze at. She was a figure to look upon
in silence. The dancing frenzy must have seized upon her while she was
dressing; for she was in her bodice, bare-armed, her hair floating
unbound far below the waist of her barred or banded skirt. She had
caught up her castanets, and rattled them as she danced with a kind of
passionate fierceness, her lithe body undulating with flexuous grace,
her diamond eyes glittering, her round arms wreathing and unwinding,
alive and vibrant to the tips of the slender fingers. Some passion
seemed to exhaust itself in this dancing paroxysm; for all at once she
reeled from the middle of the floor, and flung herself, as it were in a
careless coil, upon a great tiger's-skin which was spread out in one corner
of the apartment.
The old Doctor stood motionless, looking at her as she lay panting on
the tawny, black-lined robe of the dead monster, which stretched out
beneath her, its rude flattened outline recalling the Terror of the
Jungle as he crouched for his fatal spring.
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