ly strange figures leaping in a circle of light, figures that came
out of the deepest darkness to make a big magic.

The leader flung some stuff into the brazier, and a great fan of blue
light flared up. He was weaving circles, and he was singing something
shrill and high, whilst his companions made a chorus with their deep
monotone. I can't tell you what the dance was. I had seen the Russian
ballet just before the war, and one of the men in it reminded me of
this man. But the dancing was the least part of it. It was neither
sound nor movement nor scent that wrought the spell, but something far
more potent. In an instant I found myself reft away from the present
with its dull dangers, and looking at a world all young and fresh and
beautiful. The gaudy drop-scene had vanished. It was a window I was
looking from, and I was gazing at the finest landscape on earth, lit by
the pure clean light of morning.

It seemed to be part of the veld, but like no veld I had ever seen. It
was wider and wilder and more gracious. Indeed, I was looking at my
first youth. I was feeling the kind of immortal light-heartedness
which only a boy knows in the dawning of his days. I had no longer any
fear of these magic-makers. They were kindly wizards, who had brought
me into fairyland.

Then slowly from the silence there distilled drops of music. They came
like water falling a long way into a cup, each the essential quality of
pure sound. We, with our elaborate harmonies, have forgotten the charm
of single notes. The African natives know it, and I remember a learned
man once telling me that the Greeks had the same art. Those silver
bells broke out of infinite space, so exquisite and perfect that no
mortal words could have been fitted to them. That was the music, I
expect, that the morning stars made when they sang together.

Slowly, very slowly, it changed. The glow passed from blue to purple,
and then to an angry red. Bit by bit the notes spun together till they
had made a harmony--a fierce, restless harmony. And I was conscious
again of the skin-clad dancers beckoning out of their circle.

There was no mistake about the meaning now. All the daintiness and
youth had fled, and passion was beating the air--terrible, savage
passion, which belonged neither to day nor night, life nor death, but
to the half-world between them. I suddenly felt the dancers as
monstrous, inhuman, devilish. The thick scents that floated from the