ords.

"You would like some dance-music now," said Arnold to the beautiful
Caroline, who stood by his side. "Shall I play some music that will make
everybody dance?"

"Like the music in the fairy-tale," said Caroline; "oh, I should like
that! I often hear such dance-music, that sets me stirring; it seems as if
it ought to move old and young."

"There are no old people here," said Arnold. "I have not seen any."

"It seems to me there are no young," answered Caroline.

"There are neither young nor old," said Arnold; "that is the trouble."

But he began to play a soft, dreamy waltz. It was full of bewitching
invitation. No one could resist it. It passed into a wild, stirring polka,
into a maddening galop, back again to a dreamy waltz. Now it was dizzying,
whirling; now it was languishing, full of repose. Now it was the burst and
clangor of a full orchestra; now it was the bewitching appeal of a single
voice that invited to dance. Up and down the long room, across the broad
room, the dancers moved. The room, that had been so full of quiet, was
swaying with motion.

Caroline seized hold of the back of a chair to stay herself.

"It whirls me on; how dizzying it is! And you, would you not like to join
in the dance? I would be your partner."

"The piano is my partner," answered Arnold. "Do you not see how it whirls
with me?"

"Yes, everything moves," said Caroline. "Are Cupid and Psyche coming to
join us? Will my great-grand-aunt come down to the waltz in her brocade?
My sober cousin, and Marie, who gave up dancing long ago,--they are all
carried away. It seems to me like the strange dance of a Walpurgis
night,--as though I saw ghosts, and demons too, whirling over the Brocken,
across wild forests. It is no longer our gilded drawing-room, with its
tapestries, its _bijouterie_, its sound and light both muffled: we are out
in the wild tempest; there are sighing pines, dashing waterfalls. Do you
know that is where your music carries me always? Whether it is grave or
gay, it takes me out into whirling winds, and tosses me in tempests. They
call society gay here, and dizzying,--dance and music, show, excess,
following each other; but it is all sleep, Lethe, in comparison with the
mad world into which your music whirls me. Oh, stop a moment, Arnold! will
you not stop? It is too wild and maddening!"

The strains crashed into discord, crashed into harmony, and then there was
a wonderful silence. The dancers were suddenly st