and waist, all moved with an intricate motion, in orbits that crossed and recrossed in the tinted sea of silk, and flashed all at once, as the returning burden of the music brought the dancers to stand and turn at the same beat of the measure.  Yet it was all unlike the square dancing of these days, which is either no dancing at all, but a disorderly walk, or else is so stiffly regular and awkward that it makes one think of a squad of recruits exercising on the drill ground.  There was not a motion, then, that lacked grace, or ease, or a certain purpose of beauty, nor any, perhaps, that was not a phrase in the allegory of love, from which all dancing is, and was, and always must be, drawn.  Swift, slow, by turns, now languorous, now passionate, now full of delicious regret, singing love’s triumph, breathing love’s fire, sighing in love’s despair, the dance and its music were one, so was sight intermingled with sound, and motion a part of both.  And at each pause, lips parted and glance sought glance in the light, while hearts found words in the music that answered the language of love.  Men laugh at dancing and love it, and women, too, and no one can tell where its charm is, but few have not felt it, or longed to feel it, and its beginnings are very far away in primeval humanity, beyond the reach of theory, unless instinct may explain all simply, as it well may.  For light and grace and sweet sound are things of beauty which last for ever, and love is the source of the future and the explanation of the past; and that which can bring into itself both love and melody, and grace and light, must needs be a spell to charm men and women.

There was more than that in the air on that night, for Don John’s return had set free that most intoxicating essence of victory, which turns to a mad fire in the veins of a rejoicing people, making the least man of them feel himself a soldier, and a conqueror, and a sharer in undying fame.  They had loved him from a child, they had seen him outgrow them in beauty, and skill, and courage, and they had loved him still the more for being the better man; and now he had done a great deed, and had fulfilled and overfilled their greatest expectations, and in an instant he leapt from the favourite’s place in their hearts to the hero’s height on the altar of their wonder, to be the young god of a nation that loved him.  Not a man, on that night, but would have sworn that Don John was braver than Alexander, wiser than Charlemagne, greater than Caesar himself; not a man but would have drawn his sword to prove it on the body of any who should dare to contradict him,—­not a mother was there, who did not pray that her sons might be but ever so little like him, no girl of Spain but dreamt she heard his soft voice speaking low in her ear.  Not often in the world’s story has a man so young done such great things as he had done and was to do before his short life was ended; never, perhaps, was any man so honoured by his own people, so trusted, and so loved.