Before long
all the people about me in the pit were laughing and clapping their
hands. The noise they made angered me. I don't know how to describe the
state I was in. My eyes wouldn't serve me, and my ears wouldn't serve
me, to see and to hear what the rest of them were seeing and hearing.
There must have been something, I fancy, in my mind that got itself
between me and what was going on upon the stage. The play looked fair
enough on the surface; but there was danger and death at the bottom of
it. The players were talking and laughing to deceive the people--with
murder in their minds all the time. And nobody knew it but me--and my
tongue was tied when I tried to tell the others. I got up, and ran out.
The moment I was in the street my steps turned back of themselves on the
way to the house. I called a cab, and told the man to drive (as far as
a shilling would take me) the opposite way. He put me down--I don't know
where. Across the street I saw an inscription in letters of flame over
an open door. The man said it was a dancing-place. Dancing was as new to
me as play-going. I had one more shilling left; and I paid to go in,
and see what a sight of the dancing would do for me. The light from the
ceiling poured down in this place as if it was all on fire. The crashing
of the music was dreadful. The whirling round and round of men and
women in each other's arms was quite maddening to see. I don't know what
happened to me here. The great blaze of light from the ceiling turned
blood-red on a sudden. The man standing in front of the musicians waving
a stick took the likeness of Satan, as seen in the picture in our family
Bible at home. The whirling men and women went round and round,
with white faces like the faces of the dead, and bodies robed in
winding-sheets. I screamed out with the terror of it; and some person
took me by the arm and put me outside the door. The darkness did me
good: it was comforting and delicious--like a cool hand laid on a hot
head. I went walking on through it, without knowing where; composing
my mind with the belief that I had lost my way, and that I should find
myself miles distant from home when morning dawned. After some time
I got too weary to go on; and I sat me down to rest on a door-step.
I dozed a bit, and woke up. When I got on my feet to go on again, I
happened to turn my head toward the door of the house. The number on it
was the same number an as ours. I looked again. And behold, it was o