O'Brien deliberately uses open words when he says that later that night "Azar mocked the girl's dancing." On the one hand, Azar could just have been imitating the dance; on the other hand, he may also have been making light of it, the pejorative meaning of "mock." But this haunting statement is only a smokescreen: O'Brien is tricking us and wondering whether we will catch the main point — that Azar is now dancing. Even after they have left the scene and the girl behind, their minds still dwell on the dance and its elusive meaning. For the soldiers, if they can do the dance properly, they may understand something, anything about where they are and what they are doing there.
In the end, the pseudo-hero of the vignette, Henry Dobbins, proves to be the most deluded. He stops Azar from dancing and warns him that he should dance "right." What Dobbins does not understand, and what is unspeakably beyond the comprehension of the band of soldiers, is that they cannot dance right, for they have no meaning to deliver. All they can do is make large dance-like gestures, mocking what they cannot, but what they desperately want to, understand.
