'The Russian Dancer'

Two performers, a young conjurer and a woman past her prime, chance to talk over tea in a train station.

The man, sleekly dressed and successful, perceives her as 'less like a dancer than an old prostitute, over-dressed and over-painted', but is arrested by a photograph of her at eighteen.

Among Bates's early tales, this is one of the few that is unrelated to the country and people of the Midlands.

A manuscript is held in the collection of the Lilly Library, Indiana University, USA. (https://archives.iu.edu/catalog/InU-Li-VAD6063)

In John O'London's Weekly (November 14, 1931), The Black Boxer Tales (1932), The Bride Comes to Evensford and Other Tales (1949).