But on drawing nearer
she perceived that it was a cloud of dust, lit by candles within the
outhouse, whose beams upon the haze carried forward the outline of
the doorway into the wide night of the garden.
When she came close and looked in she beheld indistinct forms
racing up and down to the figure of the dance, the silence of their
footfalls arising from their being overshoe in "scroff"--that is
to say, the powdery residuum from the storage of peat and other
products, the stirring of which by their turbulent feet created the
nebulosity that involved the scene. Through this floating, fusty
_debris_ of peat and hay, mixed with the perspirations and warmth of
the dancers, and forming together a sort of vegeto-human pollen, the
muted fiddles feebly pushed their notes, in marked contrast to the
spirit with which the measure was trodden out. They coughed as
they danced, and laughed as they coughed. Of the rushing couples
there could barely be discerned more than the high lights--the
indistinctness shaping them to satyrs clasping nymphs--a multiplicity
of Pans whirling a multiplicity of Syrinxes; Lotis attempting to
elude Priapus, and always failing.
At intervals a couple would approach the doorway for air, and
the haze no longer veiling their features, the demigods resolved
themselves into the homely personalities of her own next-door
neighbours.
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