After this, I repaired every morning to the same hall; where I
sometimes sat in the chair and dreamed deliciously, and sometimes
walked up and down over the black floor. Sometimes I acted
within myself a whole drama, during one of these perambulations;
sometimes walked deliberately through the whole epic of a tale;
sometimes ventured to sing a song, though with a shrinking fear
of I knew not what. I was astonished at the beauty of my own
voice as it rang through the place, or rather crept undulating,
like a serpent of sound, along the walls and roof of this superb
music-hall. Entrancing verses arose within me as of their own
accord, chanting themselves to their own melodies, and requiring
no addition of music to satisfy the inward sense. But, ever in
the pauses of these, when the singing mood was upon me, I seemed
to hear something like the distant sound of multitudes of
dancers, and felt as if it was the unheard music, moving their
rhythmic motion, that within me blossomed in verse and song. I
felt, too, that could I but see the dance, I should, from the
harmony of complicated movements, not of the dancers in relation
to each other merely, but of each dancer individually in the
manifested plastic power that moved the consenting harmonious
form, understand the whole of the music on the billows of which
they floated and swung.
At length, one night, suddenly, when this feeling of dancing came
upon me, I bethought me of lifting one of the crimson curtains,
and looking if, perchance, behind it there might not be hid some
other mystery, which might at least remove a step further the
bewilderment of the present one.
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