, and the clash of the
castanets grew feeble in proportion to the distance, and
diminished ever till, as we ceased to see, so we ceased to
hear her. But again it came back from the distance,
increasing always by degrees, till it burst out full as she
reappeared in a flood of light at the spot where we least
expected her. And then she came so near that she touched us
with her dress, clashing the castanets with a maddening
volubility, till they weakened once more and twittered like
cicalas, while now and then across their monotonous racket
she uttered shrill yet tender cries which pierced to our own
souls. Afterwards she retired once more, but plunged herself
only half in the darkness, appearing and disappearing by
turns, now flying from our gaze and now desiring to be
seen,[88] while later still you neither saw nor heard her
save for a far-off plaintive note like the sigh of a dying
girl. And we remained aghast, throbbing with admiration and
fear, longing for the moment when her veil, fluttering with
the dance-movement, should be lighted up by the torches,
when her voice should warn us of her return, with a joyful
cry, to which we answered involuntarily, because it made us
vibrate with a crowd of secret harmonies. Then she came
back; she spun round like a flower stripped from its stalk
by the wind; she sprang from the ground as if it rested only
with her to quit earth for ever; she dropped again as if it
was only her will which kept her from touching it at all;
she did not bound from the floor--you would have thought
that she shot from it--that some mysterious law of her
destiny forbade her to touch it, save in order to fly from
it. And her head, bent with an expression of caressing
impatience, and her arms, gracefully opened, as though in
appealing prayer, seemed to implore us to save her.

The captain himself is on the point of yielding to the temptation, but
is anticipated by Sergy, whose embrace she returns, but sinks into a
chair, and then, seeming to forget the presence of the others
altogether, invites him to follow her through tortuous and ruined
passages (which she describes) to a sepulchre, which she inhabits, with
owls for her only live companions. Then she rises, picks up her
shroud-like mantle, and vanishes in the darkness with a weird laugh and
the fam