Suddenly she saw him, dressed in the white uniform of a Russian,
standing by a buttress of the wall. His uniform had a faint yellowish
colour, as if it had been laid away for many years against this
evening's dance; the light caught his knees and long boots, but the
shadow of the buttress crept over his face, turned from her towards a
further door. On his head he wore a white hat of curling sheep's wool,
which made him seem fantastically tall.
When Fanny had surveyed him, from the tip of his lit hat to his lit
feet, she was content to leave him in his shadowed corner, and turned
willingly to dance with Duval. The little man offered an arm to hold
her, and, as he came nearer to her, his feet pressed the bottom ring of
wire about her skirt, and the whole bell of flowers and frills swung
backwards and stood out obliquely behind her.
Presently the Jew boy, Reherrey, detached himself from the others and
came out to stand by her and flatter her. He had wound the black stuff
that he had bought three days before so cleverly round his slim body
that he seemed no fatter than a lacquered hairpin. The cynical flattery
of this nineteen-year-old Jew, the plunging admiration which Duval
breathed at her side, the attentive look in the bright eyes of the
Commandant Dormans, who had come near them and stood before her, filled
her with joy.
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