The tune ended. Maria had a light sheen on her brow and lip, which she hoped seemed, under the lights of the candle and the fireplace, like a glow rather than a mustache.

When the silence became unbearable, she whispered, “Monsieur Hugo? Où avez-vous appris à danser? Paris?”

Detroit, he declared. Detroit, la ville du Stokowski. Because he was now feeling pleasantly arrogant, he added, “Et le plus grand fourneau du monde.”

He released Maria to her sisters, where she sat, dazedly stroking her flower. He put his fists to his hips, and then beckoned Vasilisa with one finger. Her eyes went wide, and her sisters put their hands to their mouths in mock horror for her. Vasilisa smoothed out her dress. She stepped toward Hugo as if he might eat her.

“Monsieur Hugo,” she said quietly, “savez-vous danser comme Mouvet? Maurice Mouvet?”

“Tango?” he replied, but before she could respond, he continued, “Or … Apache,” pronouncing it “Ah-pash,” as did the French. Under his breath, he added, “Oui. L’Apache.” And he feigned the opening posture, tilting back on his heels, thumb below his chin and finger caressing his jawline in a manly appraisal of his partner. “Waltz time, please,” he said, for he was in the final moments of being able to do no wrong.

But Anna, Maria, and Aarne did not strike up the band. Had Hugo picked the tango, they might have complied. Even though the tango was dark and sultry, it was late enough in the evening for a saucy kind of lark. But the Apache? Did Hugo really think he was about to perform the Apache with Vasilisa? She was but a child and could be forgiven her token whims, but Hugo, a soldier, an adult—

The Apache dance told a scandalous story of the Marseilles underworld. Hugo, thumb under chin, was now in the position taken by the pimp, and Vasilisa, were she actually going to follow through, would soon be toppled to her knees, to clutch his thighs in supplication.

But the action of the Apache dance would truly begin when, upon the girl’s refusal to pay him, the pimp would slap her face, drag her by her hair, fix her arms behind her back, and in perfect accord with the music, smack her head against the floor in waltz time. Women who danced the Apache at night pioneered the daytime use of pancake makeup.

Unfortunately, Hugo’s powers of analysis were now hobbled. “I have killed a man and now I am dancing among princesses,” he thought. The wine had unspooled a whirlwind Möbius strip of cause and effect: the women’s greater interest in him as a savior and warrior and dancer, and as above all a man, caused him to become even more proficient and more arrogant, which in turn propelled them to hold him in even higher regard. He could do anything.