m: and here Venus--mark how delicately she
lifts, following the motion of her lord--`

'Just with the Sun her dainty feet doth move--'

'And this is Dancing--Orchestra Coeli--the Dancing of the Firmament.'

'Wonderful!' I cried.

'You shall say so presently! So far you have only seen: now hear!'

He drew out a small brass pin from the foot of the mechanism, and at
once it began to hum, on three or four notes such as children make
with a comb and a scrap of paper.

The notes lifted and fell, and the little balls--each in his separate
circle--wheeled and spun, twinkling in time with them, until my head,
too, began to swim.

'It will run for an hour now,' my host assured me. 'Indeed, with one
to watch and draw up the weights at due intervals, it will run for
ever.'

'It dizzies me,' said I.

'Your head is light, belike, with the loss of blood. Sit you back in
the chair, and I will try now what may be done with ointment and
plaster.'

He forced me to seat myself and, fetching a small medicine-box from
the press, began to operate. His fingers were extraordinarily quick
and thin, and so delicate of touch that I felt no pain, or very
little: but though I lay with my head far back and saw the machine no
longer, it had set my brain spinning, and the pressure of his hands
appeared to be urging it round and round, while his voice (for he
talked without intermission) mingled and interwove itself with the
drone of the music from the table. He was reciting verses; from his
favourite poem, no doubt. But though the sound of them ran in my
ears like a brook, I can remember one couplet only,--

'And all in sundry measures do delight,
Yet altogether keep no measure right. . . .'

I dare say that, yielding to the giddiness, I swooned: and yet I can
remember no interval. The circles seemed to have hold of me, to be
drawing me down, and yet down; until, like a diver half-bursting for
breath, I found strength, sprang upwards, and reached the surface
with a cry.

The cry rang in my ears yet. But had it come, after all, from my own
lips? I gripped the arms of the chair in a kind of terror, and
leaned forward, staring at my host, who had fallen back a pace, and
stood between me and the lamp.

'Pardon me, sir,' I found voice to say after a pause 'I must have
fallen into a doze, I think. My head--' I put a hand up to it and
discovered that it was bandaged. He did not answer me, but appeared
to be lis