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 curious 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 danore 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, tra