Page:Nigger Heaven (1926).pdf/267

 endless torment. Triumphant trumpets called to a profane glory. Byron offered himself freely to the conforming curves of her sensual body, delivered himself to the spell of the clouds of ever-changing colour that came up from below, of the depraved clang-tints of this perverted Dies Irae that sounded from an invisible source, and of an unfamiliar, pungent aroma.

Suddenly, a woman in a black cloak crept through the dancers to the centre of the floor. Simultaneously, the room became black with darkness and the music stopped. There was absolute silence.

When Byron could see again, he was aware that he and Lasca, together with all the others, were huddled against the vermilion velvet hangings. A pale, hideous, green glow suffused the room. The woman in the black cloak stood alone, perfectly motionless, in the centre of the glass floor. Now a pipe—oh, so far away—began to wail and there was a faint reverberation of the tom-tom. A cylinder of fierce white light shot up from below and enclosed the woman, playing in little ripples on the black satin of her cloak. A bell in the distance tinkled feebly and the cloak fell to the floor.

The girl—she could have been no more than sixteen—stood entirely nude. She was pure black, with savage African features, thick nose, thick lips, bushy hair which hovered about her face like a lanate halo, while her eyes rolled back so far that only the whites were visible. And now she began to