The floors bent beneath the feet of
the time-keeping dancers. But twice in the evening some of the inmates
started, and the pallor occasionally common to the household overspread
their faces, for they felt underneath them a counter-motion to the dance,
as if the floor rose slightly to answer their feet. And all the time their
brother lay below in the dungeon, like John the Baptist in the castle of
Herod, when the lords and captains sat around, and the daughter of
Herodias danced before them. Outside, all around the castle, brooded the
dark night unheeded; for the clouds had come up from all sides, and were
crowding together overhead. In the unfrequent pauses of the music, they
might have heard, now and then, the gusty rush of a lonely wind, coming
and going no one could know whence or whither, born and dying unexpected
and unregarded.
"But when the festivities were at their height, when the external and
passing confidence which is produced between superficial natures by a
common pleasure was at the full, a sudden crash of thunder quelled the
music, as the thunder quells the noise of the uplifted sea.
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