IV

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    A couple of hours after Su Michael Robartes returned and told me that I would have to leareps of an exceedingly antique dance, because before my initiation could be perfected I had to join three times in a magical dance, for rhythm was the wheel of Eternity, on which alohe tra and actal could be broken, and the spirit set free. I found that the steps, which were simple enough, resembled certain antique Greek dances, and having been a good dancer in my youth and the master of many curio<s>.</s>us Gaelic steps, I soon had them in my memory. He then robed me and himself in a e which suggested by its shape both Greed Egypt, but by its crimson colour a more passionate life than theirs; and having put into my hands a little less ser of bronze, wrought into the likeness of a rose, by some modern craftsmaold me to open a small door opposite to the door by which I had entered. I put my hand to the handle, but the moment I did so the fumes of the inse, helped perhaps by his mysterious glamour, made me fall again into a dream, in which I seemed to be a mask, lying on the ter of a little Eastern shop. Many persons, with eyes sht and still that I khem for more than human, came in and tried me on their faces, but at last fluo a er with a little laughter; but all this passed in a moment, for when I awoke my hand was still upon the handle. I opehe door, and found myself in a marvellous passage, along whose sides were many divinities wrought in a mosaiot less beautiful than the mosai the Baptistery at Ravenna, but of a less severe beauty; the predominant colour of each divinity, which was surely a symbolic colour, beied in the lamps that hung from the ceiling, a curiously?sted lamp before every divinity. I passed on, marvelling exceedingly how these enthusiasts could have created all this beauty in so remote a place, and half persuaded to believe in a material alchemy, by the sight of so much hiddeh; the ser filling the air, as I passed, with smoke of ever?ging colour.

    I stopped before a door, on whose bronze panels were wrought great waves in whose shadow were faint suggestions of terrible faces. Those beyond it seemed to have heard our steps, for a voice cried: Is the work of the Incorruptible Fire at an end? and immediately Michael Robartes answered: The perfect gold has e from the atbanor. The door swung open, and we were in a great circular room, and among men and women  who were dang slowly in crimson robes. Upon the ceiling was an immense rose wrought in mosaid about the walls, also in mosaic, was a battle of gods and angels, the gods glimmering like rubies and sapphires, and the angels of the one greyness, because, as Michael Robartes whispered, they had renouheir divinity, and turned from the unfolding of their separate hearts, out of love fod of humility and sorrow. Pillars supported the roof and made a kind of circular cloister, each pillar being a n of fused shapes, divinities, it seemed, of the wind, who rose as in a whirling dance of <bdo>.</bdo>more than human vehemence, and playing upon pipes and cymbals; and from among these shapes were thrust out hands, and in these hands were sers. I was bid place my ser also in a hand and take my plad dance, and as I turned from the pillars towards the dancers, I saw that the floor was of a green stone, and that a pale Christ on a pale cross was wrought in the midst. I asked Robartes the meaning of this, and was told that they desired To trouble His unity with their multitudinous feet. The dance wound in and out, trag upon the floor the shapes of petals that copied the petals in the rose overhead, and to the sound of hidden instruments which were perhaps of an antique pattern, for I have never heard the like; and every moment the dance was more passionate, until all the winds of the world seemed to have awakened under our feet. After a little I had grown weary, and stood under a pillar watg the ing and going of those flame?like figures; until gradually I sank into a half?dream, from which I was awakened by seeing the petals of the great rose, which had no lohe look of mosaic, falling slowly through the inse?heavy air, and, as they fell, shaping into the likeness of living beings of araordinary beauty. Still faint and cloud?like, they began to dance, and as they daook a more and more definite shape, so that I was able to distinguish beautiful Gre faces and august Egyptian faces, and now and again to name a divinity by the staff in his hand or by a bird fluttering over his head; and soon every mortal foot danced by the white foot of an immortal; and iroubled eyes that looked into untroubled shadowy eyes, I saw the brightness of uttermost desire as though they had found at length, after unreable wandering, the lost love of their youth. Sometimes, but only for a moment, I saw a faint solitary figure with a Rosa veiled face, and carrying a faint torch, flit among the dancers, but like a dream within a dream, like a shadow of a shadow, and I knew by an uanding born from a deeper fountain than thought, that it was Eros himself, and that his face was veiled because no man or woman from the beginning of the world has ever known what love is, or looked into his eyes, for Eros alone of divinities is altogether a spirit, and hides in passions not of his essence if he would uh a mortal heart. So that if a man love nobly he knows love through infiy, unspeakable trust, unending sympathy; and if ignobly through vehement jealousy, sudden hatred, and unappeasable desire; but unveiled love he never knows. While I thought these things, a voice cried to me from the crimson figures: Into the dahere is hat  be spared out of the dance; into the dance! into the dahat the gods may make them bodies out of the substance of our hearts; and before I could answer, a mysterious wave of passion, that seemed like the soul of the dance moving within our souls, took Alchemica. hold of me, and I was swept, her senting nor refusing, into the midst. I was dang with an immortal august woman, who had black lilies in her hair, and her dreamy gesture seemed laden with a wisdom more profound than the darkhat is between star and star, and with a love like the love that breathed upoers; and as we danced on and on, the inse drifted over us and round us, c us away as in the heart of the world, and ages seemed to pass, and tempests to awake and perish in the folds of our robes and in her heavy hair.

    Suddenly I remembered that her eyelids had never quivered, and that her lilies had not dropped a black petal, or shaken from their places, and uood with a great horror t<s>.</s>hat I danced with one who was more or less than human, and who was drinking up my soul as an ox drinks up a wayside pool; and I fell, and darkness passed over me.

    I awoke suddenly as though something had awakened me, and saw that I was lying on a roughly painted floor, and that on the ceiling, which was at no great distance, was a roughly painted rose, and about me on the walls half?finished paintings. The pillars and the sers had gone; and near me a score of sleepers lay ed in disordered robes, their upturned faces looking to my imagination like hollow masks; and a chill dawn was shining down upon them from a long window I had not noticed before; and outside the sea roared. I saw Michael Robartes lying at a little distand beside him a bowl ht bronze which looked as though it had once held inse. As I sat thus, I heard a sudden tumult of angry men and womens voices mix  with the r of the sea; and leaping to my feet, I went quickly to Michael Robartes, and tried to shake him out of his sleep. I then seized him by the shoulder and tried to lift him, but he fell backwards, and sighed faintly; and the voices became louder and angrier; and there was a sound of heavy blows upon the door, which opened on to the pier. Suddenly I heard a sound of rending wood, and I k had begun to give, and I ran to the door of the room. I pushed it open and came out upon a passage whose bare boards clattered under my feet, and found in the passage another door which led into ay kit; and as I passed through the door I heard two crashes in quick succession, and knew by the sudden noise of feet and the shouts that the door which opened on to the pier had fallen inwards. I ran from the kit and out into a small yard, and from this down some steps which desded the seaward and sloping side of the pier, and from the steps clambered along the waters edge, with the ang<dfn></dfn>ry voices ringing in my ears. This part of the pier had been but lately refaced with blocks of granite, so that it was almost clear of seaweed; but when I came to the old part, I found it so slippery with greehat I had to climb up on to the roadway. I looked towards the Temple of the Alchemical Rose, where the fishermen and the women were still shouting, but somewhat more faintly, and saw that there was no one about the door or upon the pier; but as I looked, a little crowd hurried out of the door and began gathering large stones from where they were heaped up in readiness for the ime a storm shattered the pier, when they would be laid under blocks of granite. While I stood watg the crowd, an old man, who was, I think, the voteen, poio me, and screamed out something, and the crowd whitened, for all the faces had turowards me. I ran, and it was well for me that pullers of the oar are poorer men with their feet than with their arms and their bodies; a while I ran I scarcely heard the followi or the angry voices, for many voices of exultation and lamentation, which were fotten as a dream is fotten the moment they were heard, seemed to be ringing in the air over my head.

    There are moments even now when I seem to hear those voices of exultation and lamentation, and when the indefinite world, which has but half lost its mastery over my heart and my intellect, seems about to claim a perfect mastery; but I carry the rosary about my neck, and when I hear, or seem to hear them, I press it to my heart and say: He whose name is Legion is at our doors deceiving our intellects with subtlety and flattering our hearts with beauty, and we have no trust but in Thee; and then the war that rages withi other times is still, and I am at peace.

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