To me the dancing was a keen delight, a passion. As I
danced I saw and felt a thousand things, I can not tell you how. Now
my feet appeared light as air, like thistledown, my body to float.
I was as a lost soul flying home, flocks of birds singing me to come
with them into a pleasant land.
"Then all that changed, and I was passing through a bitter land,
with harsh shadows and tall cold mountains. From clefts and hollows
figures flew out and caught at me with filmy hands. These melancholy
things pursued me as I flew, till my wings drooped, and I felt that
I must drop into the dull marsh far beneath, round which travelled
a lonely mist.
"But this too passed, and I came through a land all fire, so that,
as I flew swiftly, my wings were scorched, and I was blinded often,
and often missed my way, and must change my course of flight. It was
all scarlet, all that land--scarlet sky and scarlet sun, and scarlet
flowers, and the rivers running red, and men and women in long red
robes, with eyes of flame, and voices that kept crying, 'The world
is mad, and all life is a fever!'"
She paused for a moment, seeming to come out of a dream, and then
she laughed a little.
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