oloured of the earth in
which they seemed so long to have lain! Fearfuller yet, the eye-sockets
were not empty; in each was a lidless living eye! In those wrecks of
faces, glowed or flashed or sparkled eyes of every colour, shape, and
expression. The beautiful, proud eye, dark and lustrous, condescending
to whatever it rested upon, was the more terrible; the lovely,
languishing eye, the more repulsive; while the dim, sad eyes, less at
variance with their setting, were sad exceedingly, and drew the heart in
spite of the horror out of which they gazed.

I rose and went among the apparitions, eager to understand something
of their being and belongings. Were they souls, or were they and their
rhythmic motions but phantasms of what had been? By look nor by gesture,
not by slightest break in the measure, did they show themselves aware
of me; I was not present to them: how much were they in relation to each
other? Surely they saw their companions as I saw them! Or was each only
dreaming itself and the rest? Did they know each how they appeared to
the others--a death with living eyes? Had they used their faces, not for
communication, not to utter thought and feeling, not to share existence
with their neighbours, but to appear what they wished to appear, and
conceal what they were? and, having made their faces masks, were they
therefore deprived of those masks, and condemned to go without faces
until they repented?

"How long must they flaunt their facelessness in faceless eyes?" I
wondered. "How long will the frightful punition endure? Have they at
length begun to love and be wise? Have they yet yielded to the shame
that has found them?"

I heard not a word, saw not a movement of one naked mouth. Were they
because of lying bereft of speech? With their eyes they spoke as if
longing to be understood: was it truth or was it falsehood that spoke
in their eyes? They seemed to know one another: did they see one skull
beautiful, and another plain? Difference must be there, and they had had
long study of skulls!

My body was to theirs no obstacle: was I a body, and were they but
forms? or was I but a form, and were they bodies? The moment one of the
dancers came close against me, that moment he or she was on the other
side of me, and I could tell, without seeing, which, whether man or
woman, had passed through my house.

On many of the skulls the hair held its place, and however dressed, or
in itself however beautiful, to my eyes