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 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 instrument or 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 the vortex of
movement. I could not think that there had been a life beyond the
whirling of the dance.

'Then with a shock, the ecstasy turned to agony and rage. I struggled to
free myself but seemed only to increase the passion of the steps I moved
to. When I shrieked I could only echo the notes of the rhythm.

'At last, with a movement of uncontrollable frenzy I broke back to
consciousness and awoke.

'I dragged myself trembling to the window of the cottage and looked out.
The moon was glittering across the bay and there was no sound anywhere
on the island.'

XII

In all drama which would give direct expression to reverie, to the
speech of the soul with itself, there is some device that checks the
rapidity of dialogue. When Oedipus speaks out of the most vehement
passions, he is conscious of the presence of the chorus, men before whom
he must keep up appearances, 'children latest born of Cadmus' line' who
do not share his passion. Nobody is hurried or breathless. We listen to
reports and discuss them, taking part as it were in a council of state.
Nothing happens before our eyes. The dignity of Greek drama, and in a
lesser degree of that of Corneille and Racine, depends, as contrasted
with the troubled life of Shakespearean drama, on an almost even speed
of dialogue, and on a so continuous exclusion of the animation of common
life, that thought remains lofty and language rich. Shakespeare, upon
whose stage everything may happen, even the blinding of Gloster, and who
has no formal check except what is implied in the slow, elaborate
structure of blank verse, obtains time for reverie by an often
encumbering Euphuism, and by such a loosening of his plot as will give
his characters the leisure to look at life from without. Maeterlinck--to
name the first modern of the old way who comes to mind--reaches the same
end, by choosing instead of human be