And the dance begins.  Youths and maidens advance to meet each other with graceful movements.  Every step must be a thing of beauty, every bend and rising, while the double flutes play faster and faster, and the measured rhythm becomes a wild whirl.  They all know the dance, and the music is a guide to the feeling to be expressed; the dancing must be suited to it.  Every gesture is a stroke of color which may beautify or mar the picture.  Body and spirit are in perfect harmony, combining to represent the feelings that stir the soul.  It is a work of art, the art of the arms and feet.  Even when passion is at the highest the guiding law is observed.  Nay, when the dancers fly wildly apart, they, not merely come together again with unerring certainty, but form in new combination another delightful and perfectly harmonious picture.

“Seek and find” this dance might be called, for the first idea is to represent the wandering of Demeter in search of her daughter Persephone, whom Pluto has carried off to the nether world, till she finds her and clasps her in her motherly arms once more.  Thus does the earth bewail the reaped fruit of the field, which is buried in the ground in the winter sowing, to rise again in the spring; thus does a faithful heart pine during absence till it is reunited to the beloved one; thus do we mourn our dead till our soul is assured of their resurrection:  and this belief is the end and clew to the mystery.

All this grief and search, this longing and crying for the absent, this final restoration and the bliss of new possession, is set forth by the youths and damsels-now in slow and now in vehement action, but always with infinite grace.

Melissa threw her whole soul into the dance while Demeter was seeking the lost Persephone, her thoughts were with her brothers; and she laughed as heartily as any one at the jests with which Iambe cheered the stricken mother.  And when the joy of meeting was to find expression, she need not think of anything but the fact that the youth who held out his hand to her loved her and cared for her.  In this, for the moment, lay the end of all her longing and seeking, the fulfillment of every wish; and as the chorus shouted, “Iakchos!” again and again, her soul seemed to have taken wings.

The reserve of her calm and maidenly nature broke down; in her ecstasy she snatched from her shoulder the wreath of ivy with which Diodoros had decked her, and waved it aloft.  Her long hair had fallen loose in the dance and flowed wildly about her, and her shout of “Iakchos!” rang clear in the night air.

The youth she loved gazed at her with ravished eyes, as at some miracle; she, heedless of the others, threw her arms round his neck, and, as he kissed her, she said once more, but loud enough now to be heard from afar, “The world is a banqueting-hall!” and again she joined in the shout of “Iakchos!” her eyes bright with excitement.  Cups filled high with wine now circulated among the mad-cap mystics; even Melissa refreshed herself, handing the beaker to her lover, and Diodoros raised to his mouth that place on the rim which her lips had touched.