A DANGER'S SOUL.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1678, 27 April 1904, Page 4

A DANGER'S SOUL.

They sat side by side in the stalls ]ust in front of me, and I was glad, because they did not giet ini my wav. either of them; lie a middle-aged man, with that peculiai neatness of shoulder-line, collar, and moustache which bespeaks “the service at first sight; she. sitting somewhat strangely low in her seat, with great hollow-set retriever-brown eyes and masses of soft blonde-cindre hair. Ridiculously unlike each other, and yet uncle and! niece with, out a doubt. The play was one of those pretty trifles that we, fortunately see frequently just now —a quaint old fairy story somewhere in the background deliciously pretty music, exquisite colouring, a maze of ordered grace in movement, light, and sound. The girl said little but watched it all with, interest that wax ed and waned somewhat strangely. She was not amused, her ear was not charmed by the music, her eye was not attracted by the changing colours—what was it, then? What held her breathless at intervals, quivering, her little face set, ner brown eyes dark anid 1 wide with excitement, her lips parted, her whole frail being held as by a spell? The dancing. I saw that very soon. Saw and understood 1 .

There wasmuch dancing in the play, and of a very fine order. We have feared of late years that dancing was becomin a lost art. There seemed to be less and less of it ini plays of that sort to which we once went in order to see) dancing primarily. The funny man who is always going in terror of physical violence, or who wears female attire, has proved ton* jours perdrix 1» the jaded palates of some of us. But in this piece they danced, and one danced in particular-—one—prob ably but little older in years) than the child who watched every movement, one with a wicked, small French face, and a miraculously slight supple body—surely her bones must have been hollow, like a bird's! —and she danced) as they do whose stars danced when they were born! The uncle scanned! hep critically with the eye of a connisseur. He consulted his programme. “Ah, thought I remembered her at the*—” I fancied he bit off a name familiar at least to the knowledge of the Gay City, and he laughed softly, and! then turned to his niece. The white profile, clear-cut as a cameo, half startled him with its set intensity. “Well, Kitty, she can dance, can't she ?" As a bubble is—and is not—the rapt interest broke suddenly in. the brown eye® as she turned them to him. “Yes," said the little voice, rather clear-cut, like the cameo profile, “she can dance. She has a dancer's soul." The uncle laughed softly again. “Soul ? Hot very much of that, my clear. I doubt if she ever had such a thing!" “Pierhaips not" —I could hardly catch the words; her blonde head was bent over her crumpled programme. “Perhaps it all got mixed. Perhaps she has the. talent and the gift and the—ability, and I the soul,- who knows ?” Who, indeed? I don't think the uncle heard. He was still chuckling, and murmured “brat" (I think the word! would have been “baggage" had he been alone) more than once. When the curtain foil he drew his niece’ s> cloak very carefully, if clumsily, round her, and fished up from beneath her seat a pair of crutches. Perhaps it had “all got mixed." She, at least, “had the dancer's soul."—“M. N." ini the “Queen."