Page:The Art of Nijinsky.djvu/62

 Rh dances too, more brilliantly than them all. But still he is sick at heart, distracted by the thought of the Swan-queen. For a beauteous stranger has been introduced, and seeing her he experiences a second time that fond and desperate longing he had felt by the side of the Swan lake. At length he brings himself to dance with the strange lady. New life courses through his veins. He is spurred on to greater and greater feats, to more and more impossible figures. He leaps high in the air, and the company stands amazed. This is not dancing, they whisper, but black magic. Magic indeed. . . . For suddenly, in a thunderous spell of darkness, the strange lady, the Swan-queen, disappears; and the last tableau shows us the shore of the lake again, and the young prince, hot in pursuit, but by an inch too late. . . . For there is nothing now but