"What's yer hurry? To-morrow is Sunday, thank God, and we can sleep
it off in church-time. Now, have a turn with me?"
She did not abhor dancing, but she was not going to dance here. The
movement grew more passionate: the fiddlers behind the luminous
pillar of cloud now and then varied the air by playing on the wrong
side of the bridge or with the back of the bow. But it did not
matter; the panting shapes spun onwards.
They did not vary their partners if their inclination were to stick
to previous ones. Changing partners simply meant that a satisfactory
choice had not as yet been arrived at by one or other of the pair,
and by this time every couple had been suitably matched. It was then
that the ecstasy and the dream began, in which emotion was the matter
of the universe, and matter but an adventitious intrusion likely to
hinder you from spinning where you wanted to spin.
Suddenly there was a dull thump on the ground: a couple had fallen,
and lay in a mixed heap. The next couple, unable to check its
progress, came toppling over the obstacle. An inner cloud of dust
rose around the prostrate figures amid the general one of the room,
in which a twitching entanglement of arms and legs was discernible.
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