rancing verses arose within me as of their own
accord, chanting themselves to their own melodies, and requiring no
addition of music to satisfy the inward sense. But, ever in the pauses
of these, when the singing mood was upon me, I seemed to hear something
like the distant sound of multitudes of dancers, and felt as if it
was the unheard music, moving their rhythmic motion, that within me
blossomed in verse and song. I felt, too, that could I but see the
dance, I should, from the harmony of complicated movements, not of
the dancers in relation to each other merely, but of each dancer
individually in the manifested plastic power that moved the consenting
harmonious form, understand the whole of the music on the billows of
which they floated and swung.

At length, one night, suddenly, when this feeling of dancing came upon
me, I bethought me of lifting one of the crimson curtains, and looking
if, perchance, behind it there might not be hid some other mystery,
which might at least remove a step further the bewilderment of the
present one. Nor was I altogether disappointed. I walked to one of the
magnificent draperies, lifted a corner, and peeped in. There, burned
a great, crimson, globe-shaped light, high in the cubical centre of
another hall, which might be larger or less than that in which I stood,
for its dimensions were not easily perceived, seeing that floor and roof
and walls were entirely of black marble.

The roof was supported by the same arrangement of pillars radiating in
arches, as that of the first hall; only, here, the pillars and
arches were of dark red. But what absorbed my delighted gaze, was an
innumerable assembly of white marble statues, of every form, and in
multitudinous posture, filling the hall throughout. These stood, in the
ruddy glow of the great lamp, upon pedestals of jet black. Around the
lamp shone in golden letters, plainly legible from where I stood, the
two words--

TOUCH NOT!

There was in all this, however, no solution to the sound of dancing; and
now I was aware that the influence on my mind had ceased. I did not
go in that evening, for I was weary and faint, but I hoarded up the
expectation of entering, as of a great coming joy.

Next night I walked, as on the preceding, through the hall. My mind was
filled with pictures and songs, and therewith so much absorbed, that
I did not for some time think of looking within the curtain I had last
night lifted. When t