And
now, when Julian began to feel the meaning of this surging mob of men and
women, the hours danced, and he and all the crowd danced with them. And
the music that accompanied and directed the feet through the figures of
that night's quadrille was the music of words and of laughter, of hissing
enticements and of whispered replies. Irresistible was the performance
of the hours and of the crowd that lived in them. Julian knew it when the
dance began, marvelled at it for a little when the dance was ended. There
was contagion in the air, furtive, but strong as the contagion of
cholera,--the contagion of human creatures gathered together in the
night. Only the youth who dwells--like Will-o'-the-Mill--forever by the
lonely stream in the lonely mountain valley escapes it entirely. Aged
saints look backward on their lives, and remember at least one night
when it seized them in its embrace; and even the purest woman, through
its spell, has caught sight of the vision behind the veil of our
civilization, and although she has shrunk from it, has had a moment of
wonder and of interest, never quite effaced from her memory.
On every side the Oxford and Cambridge boys laughed and shouted, pushed
and elbowed. They had begun to cast off restraint, and the god that is
rowdy on a rowdy throne compelled them to their annual obeisance at his
feet.
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