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If anything had happened to Kit Raynham if it were ultimately found that he had taken his own life society at large was prepared to censure her as more or less responsible for the catastrophe! Side by side with this paragraph was another a panegyric on the perfection of Wielitzska's dancing as a whole, and dwelling particularly upon her brilliant performance in The Swan-Maiden.
The curtains swung together for the last time, the orchestra struck up the National Anthem, and the great audience which had come from all parts to witness the Wielitzska's farewell performance began to disperse. A curious quietness attended its departure. It was as though a pall of gravity hung over the big assemblage.
And, thanks to an enterprising young journalist who chanced to be prowling about Netherway on that particular day, the London newspapers flared out into large headlines, accompanied by vivid and picturesque details of the narrow escape while yachting of the famous dancer and of the well-known artist, Michael Quarrington who, in some of the cheaper papers, was credited with having saved the Wielitzska's life by swimming ashore with her.
His tone was non-committal and she eyed him sharply. "Don't admire dancing, do you?" she threw at him. Quarrington regarded her with a humorous twinkle. "And I an artist? How can you ask, Lady Arabella?" "Well, you sounded supremely detached," she grumbled. "I think Mademoiselle Wielitzska's dancing the loveliest thing I have ever seen," he returned simply. The old woman vouchsafed him a smile.
Just as she had devoted herself to Diane, so now she devoted herself to Diane's daughter, and no first performance of a new dance of the Wielitzska's took place without Virginie's presence somewhere in the house. To-night, Lady Arabella had invited her into her box and Virginie was a quivering bundle of excitement. She rose from her seat at the back of the box as the newcomers entered.
And now that the strain was over and she found herself once more in her brougham, driving homeward with the familiar clip-clop of the fat old carriage-horse's hoofs in her ears, she shrank back against the cushions marvelling at the temerity which had swept her into the Wielitzska's presence and endowed her with words that cut like a two-edged sword. Like a two-edged sword in very truth!
There had seemed a strange applicability in the choice, and to those who had eyes to see there was a new quality in the Wielitzska's dancing a depth of significance and a spirituality of interpretation which was commented upon in the Press the next day. It had been quite unmistakable. She had gripped her audience so that throughout the final scene of the ballet no word was spoken.
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