lery high overhead.
Light girders, stems and threads of gold, burst from the pillars
like fountains, streamed like an Aurora across the roof and
interlaced, like--like conjuring tricks. All about the great
circle for the dancers there were beautiful figures, strange
dragons, and intricate and wonderful grotesques bearing lights.
The place was inundated with artificial light that shamed the
newborn day. And as we went through the throng the people turned
about and looked at us, for all through the world my name and face
were known, and how I had suddenly thrown up pride and struggle to
come to this place. And they looked also at the lady beside me,
though half the story of how at last she had come to me was unknown
or mistold. And few of the men who were there, I know, but judged
me a happy man, in spite of all the shame and dishonour that had
come upon my name.

"The air was full of music, full of harmonious scents, full of
the rhythm of beautiful motions. Thousands of beautiful people
swarmed about the hall, crowded the galleries, sat in a myriad
recesses; they were dressed in splendid colours and crowned with
flowers; thousands danced about the great circle beneath the white
images of the ancient gods, and glorious processions of youths and
maidens came and went. We two danced, not the dreary monotonies of
your days--of this time, I mean--but dances that were beautiful,
intoxicating. And even now I can see my lady dancing--dancing
joyously. She danced, you know, with a serious face; she danced
with a serious dignity, and yet she was smiling at me and caressing
me--smiling and caressing with her eyes.

"The music was different," he murmured. "It went--I cannot
describe it; but it was infinitely richer and more varied than any
music that has ever come to me awake.

"And then--it was when we had done dancing--a man came to
speak to me. He was a lean, resolute man, very soberly clad for
that place, and already I had marked his face watching me in the
breakfasting hall, and afterwards as we went along the passage I
had avoided his eye. But now, as we sat in a little alcove,
smiling at the pleasure of all the people who went to and fro
across the shining floor, he came and touched me, and spoke to me
so that I was forced to listen. And he asked that he might speak
to me for a little time apart.

"'No,' I said. 'I have no secrets from this lady. What do
you want to tell me?'

"He said it was a trivial