The charm of dancing, although nothing is easier than to experience it, is something that eludes statement.  It is the language of the body, graceful and significant.  It has that in it which will make it live and be loved so long as men and women exist as such.  The fascination of the motion, the magic of the music, the hour, the lights; the nearness, the touch of hands, the leaning, the support, the starting off in fresh bewilderments; the trilling down the gamut of the hall; the pauses and recommencements; even the little incidents of collision and escape; the trips, slips, and quick recoveries; the breathless words whispered in the ear, and the laughter; the dropped handkerchief, the crushed fan, the faithless hair-pin—­these, and a thousand more such small elements, make dancing imperishable.

Presently—­and it might have been after a minute or an hour, for all they could have told—­Bressant and Cornelia awoke to a sense of four bare walls, papered with a pattern of abominable regularity, a floor of rough and unwaxed boards, a panting crowd of country girls and bumpkins.  The music had ceased, and nothing remained in its place save a fiddle, a harp, and an inferior piano.

“Come out to the door!” said Bressant, “the air here is not fit for us to breathe.”

They went, Cornelia leaning on his arm, silent; their minds inactive, conscious only of a pleasant, dreamy feeling of magnetic communion.  Both felt impelled to keep together—­to be in contact; the mere thought of separation would have made them shudder.

The door stood open, and they emerged through it on to the wooden steps.  At first their eyes, dazzled by the noisy glare of the house, could distinguish nothing in the silent darkness without.  But, by-and-by, a singular gentle radiance began to diffuse itself through the soft night air, as if a new moon had all at once arisen.  They looked first at each other, and then upward at the sky.  Cornelia pressed her companion’s arm, and caught her breath.

From the north had uprisen a column of light, of about the apparent breadth of the Milky Way, but far more brilliant, and defined clearly at the edges.  Higher and higher it rose, until it reached the zenith.  Pausing a moment there, it then began to slide and lengthen down the southern slope of the sky, lower and lower, till its extreme limit seemed to mingle with the haze on the horizon.  Having thus completed its stupendous sweep, it remained, brightening and paling by turns, for several minutes.  Finally, it slowly and imperceptibly faded away, vanishing first at the loftiest point of all, and lingering downward on either side, till all was gone.

“What a glorious arch!” exclaimed Cornelia.

“It was put there for us, was it not?” rejoined Bressant.