elder woman's eye and on her face the suggestion of a hatred about to
be glutted. And then the light faded and the darkness settled down on
the scene and I saw no more.

I did not raise my head from the stand, for I felt sure that this was
not all I was to behold; and in a few moments there was again a faint
scintillation. In time the light was strong enough for me to perceive
the irregular flames of a huge bonfire burning in an old square of some
mediaeval city. It was evening, and yet a throng of men and women and
children made an oval about the fire and about a slim girl who had
spread Persian carpet on the rough stones of the broad street. She was
a brunette, with dense black hair; she wore a striped skirt, and a
jacket braided with gold had slipped from her bare shoulders. She held
a tambourine in her hand and she was twisting and turning in cadence to
her own song. Then she went to one side where stood a white goat with
gilded horns and put down her tambourine and took up two swords; and
with these in her hands she resumed her dance. A man in the throng, a
man of scant thirty-five, but already bald, a man of stalwart frame,
fixed hot eyes upon her; and from time to time a smile and a sigh met
on his lips, but the smile was more dolorous than the sigh. And as the
gypsy girl ceased her joyous gyrations, the bonfire died out, and
darkness fell on the scene again, and I could no longer see anything.

Again I waited, and after an interval no longer than the other there
came a faint glow that grew until I saw clearly as in the morning sun
the glade of a forest through which a brook rippled. A sad-faced woman
sat on a stone by the side of the streamlet; her gray garments set off
the strange ornament in the fashion of a single letter of the alphabet
that was embroidered in gold and in scarlet over her heart. Visible at
some distance was a little girl, like a bright-apparelled vision, in a
sunbeam, which fell down upon her through an arch of boughs. The ray
quivered to and fro, making her figure dim or distinct, now like a real
child, now like a child's spirit, as the splendor came and went. With
violets and anemones and columbines the little girl had decorated her
hair. The mother looked at the child and the child danced and sparkled
and prattled airily along the course of the streamlet, which kept up a
babble, kind, quiet, soothing, but melancholy. Then the mother raised
her head as though her ears had detected the appro