my _Nunc Dimittis._"

He led them back to the ballroom. Then, with a low bow and a flourish
of an imaginary cocked-hat, he disappeared.

Geoffrey and Yae danced together. Then they sat out a dance; and then
they danced again. Yae was tiny, but she danced well; and Geoffrey was
used to a small partner. For Yae it was sheer delight to feel the
size and strength of this giant man bending over her like a sheltering
tree; and then to be lifted almost in his arms and to float on tiptoe
over the floor with the delightful airiness of dreams.

What strange orgies our dances are! To the critical mind what a
strange contradiction to our sheepish passion-hiding conventions! A
survival of the corroboree, of the immolation of the tribal virgins,
a ritual handed down from darkest antiquity like the cult of the
Christmas Tree and the Easter Egg; only their significance is lost,
while that of the dance is transparently evident.

Maidens as chaste as Artemis, wives as loyal as Lucretia pass into the
arms of men who are scarcely known to them with touchings of hands and
legs, with crossings of breath, to the sound of music aphrodisiac or
fescennine.

The Japanese consider, not unreasonably, that our dancing is
disgusting.

A nice girl no doubt, and a nice man too, thinks of a dance as a
graceful exercise or as a game like tennis or hockey. But Yae was not
a nice girl; and when the music stopped with its hideous abruptness,
it awoke her from a kind of trance in which she had been lost to all
sensations except the grip of Geoffrey's hand and arm, the stooping of
his shadow above her, and the tingling of her own desire.

Geoffrey left his partner at the end of their second dance. He went
upstairs to see his wife. He found her sleeping peacefully; so he
returned to the ballroom again. He looked in at the bar, and drank
another glass of champagne. He was beginning to enjoy himself.

He could not find Yae, so he danced with the gipsy girl, who had a
stride like a kangaroo. Then Yae reappeared. They had two more dances
together, and another glass of champagne. The night was fine. There
was a bright moonlight. Geoffrey remarked that it was jolly hot for
dancing. Yae suggested a stroll along the sea-shore; and in a few
minutes they were standing together on the beach.

"Oh! Look at the bonfires," cried Yae.

A few hundred yards down the sea-front, where the black shadows of the
native houses overhung the beach, the lighted windows gle