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present tonight, I can easily make excuses for her absence."
He was speaking, Ilona thought, as if she were not there, and she found that it made her
angry.
"I should be delighted to attend the gypsies' party," she said to the Count, "and as I am
certain it would be expected for us to make them some small gift, perhaps you would be kind
enough to choose something appropriate to the occasion."
She turned towards the stairs as she spoke, and with almost a flounce of her skirts she
walked away, with her head held high.
'I am growing very tired,' she thought to herself, 'of the Prince's high-handed manner! Sooner
or later I will force him to talk to me!'
As she walked up the stairs, she continued to herself:
'It is impossible to do so when I am in bed. The only way will be for me to ask him to come to
my Sitting-Room, or perhaps I could go to his.'
She tried to sound to herself defiant and determined.
But something weak and helpless inside her made her feel that the Prince was so
overpowering and so self-confident that whatever she did would merely make her look foolish
in his eyes.
Supposing he asked her what, if she was not satisfied with the way he was treating her, she
had expected?
It would be impossible for her to tell him what she really wanted without laying herself open
to the obvious retort that he did not find her attractive.
'That is the whole truth,' Ilona thought, 'I do not attract him, and nothing I can say or do will
make any difference!'
She expected to endure a miserable evening of cold indifference from the Prince and a
pretence on her part of being interested in everybody else but him.
She was finding it more and more difficult to play that part, but actually that night she did
not have to pretend.
The gypsies had congregated just outside the gardens of the Castle and because it was a
warm evening with a sky filled with a multitude of stars, the Prince and Ilona walked from the
Castle to where the gypsies were waiting for them.
Servants accompanied them with lighted torches, and when they were met by the gypsy
Chief, or Voivode, Ilona found that they were the only guests, the only people present who were
not of gypsy blood.
Her memories of the gypsies were always of small ragged bands moving about the
countryside, attending the fairs where they sold their wares, told fortunes, or collected crowds
round their performing animals.
But she had never met the gypsies as a tribe and led by their Voivode.
She had heard that many of them wielded great power amongst their people, but even so she
had not expected to see one so elaborately dressed or wearing so many jewels.
The Voivode wore a long crimson coat ornamented with gold buttons and yellow top-boots
with gold spurs. On his head was a close-fitting lamb-skin hat.
In one hand he held a heavy axe, symbolic of his authority, in the other a whip with three
leather thongs.
Jewelled daggers, stuck in the red sashes that all the gypsies wore round their waists,
glistened in the firelight.
Red was the predominant colour of the many skirts, sometimes as many as seven, worn by
the gypsy women, whose arms were encircled by dozens of jewelled bracelets, as were their
ankles.
There was a large fire in the centre of a clearing and the gypsies were ranged round it in a
circle, their tents hidden in the shadows under the trees.
Ilona and the Prince were led to a huge pile of coloured cushions on which they sat, where
they were served a gypsy meal that was unlike anything Ilona had ever eaten before.
There were stews that had a succulent taste that she had never encountered even in French
cooking.
There was special bread that the gypsies baked in their fires, and there was wine to drink in
goblets made by the Kalderash, one of the gypsy tribes, set with amethysts, sapphires,
carnelians, and quartz.
The Voivode made a speech to the Prince, thanking him for the protection that he had given
the gypsies, and immediately when he had finished there was music.
It was music, as the Count had said, that was different from anything Ilona had heard before.
There was the trill of the naiou, or pipes of Pan, the twang of cithara, the beat of the
tambourines.
But it was the violins that seemed to draw Ilona's heart from her body.
She knew that it was the union of two races, the Magyar and the Hungarian gypsies, that had
produced this soul-stirring music.
Then the haunting melody swept away not only her unhappiness but also all the restrictions
that she had felt all her life, in Paris and now in Dabrozka.
She felt as if the notes vibrated through her and set her whole being free. Then, as the dinner
was finished and only the goblets of wine remained beside their places, the dancing began.
Now the music grew wilder, more passionate, more magnetic, more demanding, so that
Ilona felt herself instinctively respond and her shoulders began to move with the rhythm of it.
Her eyes were shining in the light from the fire and they were very green. The flames picked
out the red- gold of her hair and her lips were parted.
The dancers began slowly, the women first, while those who were not dancing sang a kuruc
chant to the music, giving it rhythmic depth and a resonance that accentuated the beauty of the
instruments.
The music grew wilder, and now as the dancers quickened their pace the men joined them.
Then from the crowd flashing round the fire, their jewels dazzling at the speed with which
they moved, there came one dancer.
Ilona found it difficult to imagine that anyone could look so beautiful and at the same time so
seductive with the feline grace of a panther.
She heard her name cried by the crowd: "Mautya" "Mautya."
The gypsy had long dark hair hanging below her waist and her high cheek-bones and huge
black eyes told Ilona that she was of Russian origin.
She began to dance the Zarabandas.
This was the famous snake-dance. Ilona had heard it spoken of with bated breath.
Her body swayed like the wind in the leaves, her skirts swirled round her bare legs, and her
arms were an enticement, so that it was impossible not to watch the sensitive flexibility of her
hands.
And her dark eyes, slanting a little at the corners, flashed and seemed to be full of fire as her
body moved first swiftly, leaping in the air, then slowly, sinuously, and seductively, so that there
was the sensuousness of a serpent in every movement she made.
Then as the violins rose to a crescendo, as the dancer moved alone while the others leapt and
twirled behind her, she held out both her hands invitingly towards the Prince.
There was no need for words.
Her flashing dark eyes and her red lips spoke for her.
It seemed to Ilona as if for a moment the music was silent, until as the Prince rose to his feet
to take the outheld hands in his, there was a wild crescendo of sound that seemed to rise up into
the starlit sky.
Then as Ilona watched him dancing as wildly as the gypsy herself, she knew despairingly
that she loved him!
Chapter Five
Love came to Ilona not as a warm, exotic sense of joy, but as an all-consuming fire.
She felt it burn through her until, watching the Prince dancing with Mautya, she wanted to
tear the woman from him, to strike her, to do her violent injury, even to murder her.
She had never in her whole sheltered life felt anything like the wildly conflicting emotions
that transformed her whole body into a kind of battlefield!
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