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Updated: September 3, 2025
The interest of the public on this particular occasion was centred in the new Opera, which had only been given three times before, and in which the little dancer, Pequita, played the part of a child-heroine. The libretto was the work of Paul Zouche, and the music by one of the greatest violinists in the world, Louis Valdor.
"Walking!" answered Pequita, with a fierce little laugh, her colour coming and going with all the quick wavering hue of irritated and irritable Spanish blood, "I have, as they say 'walked across the stage. I shall dance presently!" He smiled, flicking a little ash off his cigarette. "You are a curious child!" he said; "By and by you will want severely keeping in order!"
All the same Pequita felt sure that she owed the sudden lifting of her own and her father's daily burden of life, to the unforgetting care and intercession of Leroy. Lotys was equally convinced of the same, and both she and Sergius Thord highly appreciated their new associate's unobtrusive way of doing good, as it were, by stealth.
Zouche stirred, and stretching out one hand, groped with it blindly in the air. Pequita took it, warming it between her own little palms. "Paul!" she said; "Do wake up! You have been asleep such a long time!" He opened his eyes. The grey pallor passed from his face; he lifted his head and smiled. "So! There you are, Pequita!" he said gently; "Dear little one!
A great roar, like that of hundreds of famished wild beasts, answered this gesture; mingled with acclamations, and when 'The Song of Freedom' again burst out from the singers on the stage, the whole mass of people joined in the chorus with a kind of melodious madness. Shouts of 'Pequita! Pequita! rang out on all sides, then 'Valdor!
His voice faltered, and a sudden ashy paleness overspread his features, his head fell back helplessly, and he seemed transfixed and insensible. Leroy and one or two of the others rose in alarm, thinking he had swooned, but Sergius Thord warned them back by a sign. The little Pequita, slipping from the arms of Lotys, went softly up to him. "Paul! Dear Paul!" she said in her soft childish tones.
Lotys assented, though with a little reluctance, and it was only while Pequita was away from her, performing her part on the stage, that this strange lonely woman bent her face down on the hand adorned with the star-like gem and kissed it, tears standing in her eyes as she murmured: "My love my love! If you only knew!"
"This is too great a temptation for Pequita, my friend," she said quietly, but firmly. "In duty bound, she would have to sell it in order to help her poor father. She could not justly keep it. Let me be the arbiter in this matter. If you can carry out your suggestion, and obtain for her an engagement at the Royal Opera, then give it to her, but not till then! Do you not think I am right?"
"Yes," said Lotys; "Pequita and I will go home, and there will be no dancing to-night." "No, Lotys! You will not be so cruel!" said Zouche, pushing his grey hair back from his brows, while his wild eyes glittered under the tangle, like the eyes of a beast in its lair; "Think for a moment! I do not come here and bore you with my poems, though I might very well do so!
The hunchback was going the round of the table, filling tall glasses with light Bavarian beer. "Where is the little Pequita?" asked Zouche, addressing him "Have you sent her to bed already, Sholto?" Sholto looked timorously round till he met the bright reassuring glance of Lotys, and then he replied hesitatingly
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