when she saw there was advantage. The East uses dress for ornament,
and understands its use. The veil is for places where men might look
with too bold eyes and covet. Out of sight of privileged men prudery
has no place, and almost no advocates all the way from Peshawar to
Cape Comorin.

And Yasmini had loved dancing since the days when she tottered her
first steps for her mother's and Bubru Singh's delight. Long before
an American converted the Russian Royal Ballet, and the Russian Royal
Ballet in return took all the theatre-going West by storm--scandalizing,
then amazing, then educating bit by bit--Yasmini had developed her
own ideas and brought them by arduous practise to something near
perfection. To that her strength, agility and sinuous grace were largely
due; and she practised no deceptions on herself, but valued all three
qualities for their effect on other people, keeping no light under a bushel.

The consciousness of that night's climactic quality raised her spirits
to the point where they were irrepressible, and she danced her garments
off one by one, using each in turn as a foil for her art until there was
nothing left with which to multiply rhythm and she danced before the
long French mirrors yet more gracefully with nothing on at all.

Getting Tess disrobed was a different matter. She did not own to much
prudery, but the maids' eyes were over-curious. And, lacking, as she
knew she did, Yasmini's ability to justify nakedness by poetry of motion,
she hid behind a curtain and was royally laughed at for her pains. But
she was satisfied to retain that intangible element that is best named
dignity, and let the laughter pass unchallenged. Yasmini, with her Eastern
heritage, could be dignified as well as beautiful as nature made her.
Not so Tess, or at any rate she thought not, and what one thinks is after