It came as natural to dance as to
breathe, and Saidee had always encouraged me, so when I was left alone
it made me think of her, to dance the dances of her stories."
"What about your teachers? Did they never find you out?" asked Stephen.
"Yes. One of the young teachers did at last. Not in the attic, but when
I was dancing for the big girls in their dormitory, at night--they'd
wake me up to get me to dance. But she wasn't much older than the
biggest of the big girls, so she laughed--I suppose I must have looked
quaint dancing in my nighty, with my long red hair. And though we were
all scolded afterwards, I was made to dance sometimes at the
entertainments we gave when school broke up in the summer. I was the
youngest scholar, you see, and stayed through the vacations, so I was a
kind of pet for the teachers. They were of one family, aunts and
nieces--Southern people, and of course good-natured. But all this isn't
really in the story I want to tell you. The interesting part's about
Saidee. For months I got letters from her, written from Algiers. At
first they were like fairy tales, but by and by--quite soon--they
stopped telling much about herself. It seemed as if Saidee were growing
more and more reserved, or else as if she were tired of writing to me,
and bored by it--almost as if she could hardly think of anything to say.
Then the letters stopped altogether. I wrote and wrote, but no answer
came--no answer ever came.
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