It came closer to me, gradually increasing in quickness and volume
with an irresistibly definite progression. When it was quite near
the sound began to move in my nerves and blood, and to urge me to
dance with them.
I knew that if I yielded I would be carried away to some moment of
terrible agony, so I struggled to remain quiet, holding my knees
together with my hands.
The music increased continually, sounding like the strings of harps,
tuned to a forgotten scale, and having a resonance as searching as
the strings of the cello.
Then the luring excitement became more powerful than my will, and my
limbs moved in spite of me.
In a moment I was swept away in a whirlwind of notes. My breath and
my thoughts and every impulse of my body, became a form of the
dance, till I could not distinguish between the instruments and the
rhythm and my own person or consciousness.
For a while it seemed an excitement that was filled with joy, then
it grew into an ecstasy where all existence was lost in a vortex of
movement. I could not think there had ever been a life beyond the
whirling of the dance.
