It must be easy to use your youth after
you have known the enforced reserve of age. For age is a bitter lesson.
The dance grew more wild and rattling. The _frou-frou_ of the swinging
scarlet skirts filled the great house with sound as the glitter of
spangles filled it with a shimmering light. Faust was surrounded by
fluttering women moving in complicated evolutions with a trained air of
reckless devilry. And Julian gave himself to the illusion created by the
skill of Katti Lanner, ignoring entirely the real care of the dancers,
and choosing to consider them as merely driven by wild impulse, vagrant
desires of furious motion, and the dashing gaiety of keen sensual
sensation. They danced to fire a real Faust, and he was Faust for the
moment. His arm closed more firmly round the waist of Cuckoo, and he
could feel the throbbing of her heart against the palm of his hand. He
did not look at her, and so he did not see the dawning anxiety with which
she was beginning furtively to regard him. Entirely engrossed with the
stage spectacle, the movement of his arm had been entirely mechanical,
prompted by the hardening pressure of excitement in his mind. If he had
actually crushed Cuckoo and hurt her he would have been unconscious that
he was doing it.
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