"Take my arm," said he, offering it to her. After an instant's hesitation, more mental, however, than physical, she laid her graceful hand within it, and they moved toward the dancing-room.
But at the instant of contact an electric pulsation seemed to pass through Cornelia's blood, imbuing it with a powerful ichor, alien to herself, yet whose potency was delicious to her. She fancied, also, that she herself went out in the same way to her companion, establishing a magnetic interchange of personalities, so that each felt and shared the other's thoughts and emotions.
They now stood in the principal dancing-hall, where several couples, who had already taken the floor, were revolving with various degrees of awkwardness. The music had flowed into Cornelia's ears until she was full of the rhythmical harmony. She glanced up once more at her partner, this time with a lustrous look of confidence. Was it possible that he had become inspired through her? Certainly it seemed as if the feeling of the tune were discernible in his face as well as hers; it was even betokened by the lightsome pose of his figure, and a scarcely subdued buoyancy in his step. Moment by moment did the occult sympathy between one another and the cadence of the music grow more assured and complete; and at length--though precisely how it came about neither Cornelia nor Bressant could have told--they were conscious of floating through the room, mutually supporting and leading on each other, mind and motion pulsating with the beat of the tune, amid a bright, half-seen chaos of lights, faces, and forms, dancing a waltz!
Neither felt any surprise at what, but a few moments before, both would have deemed an impossibility. The easy, whirling sweep of the motion, not ending nor beginning, seemed, to Bressant as well as to Cornelia, the most natural thing in the world. Beautifully as she danced, he was no whit her inferior. They moved in complete accord. Years of practice could not have made the harmony more perfect.
The charm of dancing, although nothing is easier than to experience it, is something that eludes statement. It is the language of the body, graceful and significant. It has that in it which will make it live and be loved so long as men and women exist as such. The fascination of the motion, the magic of the music, the hour, the lights; the nearness, the touch of hands, the leaning, the support, the starting off in fresh bewilderments; the trilling down the gamut of the hall; the pauses and recommencements; even the little incidents of collision and escape; the trips, slips, and quick recoveries; the breathless words whispered in the ear, and the laughter; the dropped handkerchief, the crushed fan, the faithless hair-pin--these, and a thousand more such small elements, make dancing imperishable.
Presently--and it might have been after a minute or an hour, for all they could have told--Bressant and Cornelia awoke to a sense of four bare walls, papered with a pattern of abominable regularity, a floor of rough and unwaxed boards, a panting crowd of country girls and bumpkins. The music had ceased, and nothing remained in its place save a fiddle, a harp, and an inferior piano.
"Come out to the door!" said Bressant, "the air here is not fit for us to breathe."
They went, Cornelia leaning on his arm, silent; their minds inactive, conscious only of a pleasant, dreamy feeling of magnetic communion. Both felt impelled to keep together--to be in contact; the mere thought of separation would have made them shudder.
The door stood open, and they emerged through it on to the wooden steps. At first their eyes, dazzled by the noisy glare of the house, could distinguish nothing in the silent darkness without. But, by-and-by, a singular gentle radiance began to diffuse itself through the soft night air, as if a new moon had all at once arisen. They looked first at each other, and then upward at the sky. Cornelia pressed her companion's arm, and caught her breath.
From the north had uprisen a column of light, of about the apparent breadth of the Milky Way, but far more brilliant, and defined clearly at the edges. Higher and higher it rose, until it reached the zenith. Pausing a moment there, it then began to slide and lengthen down the southern slope of the sky, lower and lower, till its extreme limit seemed to mingle with the haze on the horizon. Having thus completed its stupendous sweep, it remained, brightening and paling by turns, for several minutes. Finally, it slowly and imperceptibly faded away, vanishing first at the loftiest point of all, and lingering downward on either side, till all was gone.
"What a glorious arch!" exclaimed Cornelia.
"It was put there for us, was it not?" rejoined Bressant.
Some of the other guests had come out in time to see the latter part of this spectacle, as it trembled athwart the heavens. They "Oh'd" and "Ah'd" in vast astonishment and admiration; and one of them humorously asserted that it had been engaged, at a huge expense, to celebrate the anniversary of American Independence. So the celestial arch vanished in the echo of a horse-laugh. But Bressant and Cornelia, as they stood silently arm-in-arm, felt as if it were rather the presage of an emancipation of their own selves. From, or to what, they did not ask; nor did the old superstition, that such signs foretell ruin and disaster, recur to their minds until long afterward.
Dancing was now recommenced, but, by an unuttered agreement, the two refrained from participating again. The enjoyment had been too entire to risk a repetition. They sat down in one of the small boudoirs, which, through a demoralized corridor, commanded a view of the extremity of one of the dancing-rooms.
From this vantage-ground they could see the distinctive features of the assembly pass before their eyes. Girls who danced well striving to look graceful in the arms of men who danced ill, or floundering women bringing disgrace and misery upon embracing men. Dancers of the old school, whose forte lay in quadrilles and contra-dances, cutting strange capers, with faces of earnest gravity. People smiling whenever spoken to, and without hearing what was said; and on-lookers smiling, by a sort of photographic process, at fun in which they had no concern. Introductions, where the lady was self-possessed and bewitching, the gentleman monosyllabic and poker-like; others, where he was off-hand, ogling, and facetious; she, timid, credulous, and blushing. All kinds of costumes, from the solitary dress-coat, and low-necked ball-dress, worn respectively by Mr. and Mrs. Van Brueck from Albany, to the mixed tweed sack and trousers, and the checked gingham, adorning the Browne boy and girl.
"How foolish it all seems when you're not doing it yourself!" remarked Cornelia at last, laughing softly.
"But very wise when you are."
"How beautifully you danced! I didn't know you could."
"I never did before--I couldn't, with any one but you. As soon as we touched each other, I felt every thing through you."
"It was very strange, wasn't it? and yet I don't wonder at it, somehow."
"It would have been stranger not to have been so."
"Why, how have you been hearing what I said?" suddenly exclaimed Cornelia, looking at him in surprise; "I've been almost whispering all this time!"
"Have you? It sounded loud enough to me. But I could hear you think to-night, I believe. Will it be so to-morrow, do you suppose?"
"To-morrow!" repeated Cornelia. "Dear me! to-morrow is my last day here."
"The last day!" echoed Bressant, in a tone of dismay. "Shall we find one another the same as to-night when you come back?"
"Why not?" responded she, with a resumption of cheerfulness. "I sha'n't be gone but three months."
So the conversation lingered along, until gradually the greater part of it was supported by Bressant, while Cornelia sat quiet and listened--a thing she had never done before. But the young man's way of expressing himself was picturesque and piquant, keeping the attention thoroughly awake. His ideas and topics were original. He plunged into the midst of a subject