Victoria's head swam. She wondered if it were wholly the effect of the
African music, or if the lagmi she had sipped was mounting to her brain.
She grew painfully conscious of every physical sense, and it was hard to
sit and listen. She longed to spring up and dance in time to the
droning, and throbbing, and crying of the primitive instruments which
the Negroes played behind the red curtain. She felt that she must dance,
a new, strange dance the idea of which was growing in her mind, and
becoming an obsession. She could see it as if she were looking at a
picture; yet it was only her nerves and her blood that bade her dance.
Her reason told her to sit still. Striving to control herself she shut
her eyes, and would have shut her ears too, if she could. But the music
was loud in them. It made her see desert rivers rising after floods, and
water pounding against the walls of underground caverns. It made her
hear the wild, fierce love-call of a desert bird to its mate.
She could bear it no longer. She sprang up, her eyes shining, her cheeks
red. "May I dance for you to that music, Lella Alonda?" she said to the
Agha's wife. "I think I could. I long to try."
Lella Alonda, who was old, and accustomed only to the dancing of the
Almehs, which she thought shameful, was scandalized at the thought that
the young girl would willingly dance before men. She was dumb, not
knowing what answer to give, that need not offend a guest, but which
might save the Roumia from indiscretion.
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