He led her to a chair, seated himself cross-legged on the divan opposite, the tea service and a plate of chocolate leaves between them.
He knew darn well I wouldn't forget, she thought, noting the tea waiting. She looked at him approvingly, his stiff robe falling in sculptured folds, his coffee-cream head thrust to the side as in his dance as he poured the tea. The silk-hung room had an intimate Arabian Nights atmosphere that put one in the mood to learn about art.
"You will have to learn to sit as I do, in this Lotus position. The lotus is the talismanic flower of my people and land. The iris too. You make me think of the iris in the pleasure gardens of Kashmir."
He was looking at her as all men did. "What's Kashmir?" she asked to deflect him.
"It is a valley paradise protected by mountains whose tips are breasts of golden snow—and iris watched by lotus floating dreamily in softly running rivers."
She had never known a man who spoke of breasts so soon and over a tea table at that. "This is a beautiful studio, but do you have room to practice?" she said, so he wouldn't know she had noticed the word.
"Sufficient. I can move the chairs. Practice is but a matter of the will to do realized in the mind," he explained, omitting the detail that he had not given the matter a thought since his arrival in New York.
Lucy was impressed. "You mean you can do a movement or a whole dance if you just think about it?"
"Certainly. One can do whatever one wills. I say to myself I shall leap so and balance thus and then that is what I do."
"You mean you've never had any training—with the body?"
"Of course, as a boy. But once one reaches the physical state for which one aims, the body then becomes the instrument of will."
"Is that so!" she marveled. "Well, that is certainly an original way of looking at it. I must try that at Master's, but I don't think it will work. In ballet you have to practice or you're stiff."
"First, I will teach you prana, first principle of life. Then, with my help, you will become a true artist of the dance."
"That's why I want to study with you. I didn't bring a practice costume today because I didn't know what kind you liked. But this dress is full, I can do anything in it."
Ranna smiled indulgently. "I thought perhaps today we would
