Thomas said, “Ay, make it a reel!” in a gruff, shy voice, the voice of the youth whose only way of expression was through his dancing feet. All of them felt the thrill of the word each time that it was said, the lilt and beat of the tune in their brains and heels. The old feeling came back that life was only lived from dance to dance. The ecstasy came back, the almost insolent sense of power; the passion of motion, the thrill of mutual purpose and touch. The very air of the kitchen seemed to change and become mistily lamp-lit, throbbing to many hearts. Over the house there was no longer the clear arch of the evening light, but a roof of darkness, powdered with steady stars. The man and the girl felt dancers all around; sometimes they touched a shoulder or an arm. They were all waiting for the fiddle to begin, lasses in bright colours, and lads in their best clothes. Now and then somebody laughed or threw a challenge across the room, but as soon as the music started they would all be dumb. Through the mist showed the warm colours and shining hair, bright eyes and gleaming teeth, young, happy faces, and figures come to their first strength. They were all friends and acquaintances who were there, folks who had danced together through the round of the years. Agnes saw smiling girlish faces in the crowd, and men’s eyes that smiled and lingered on hers. Once she saw Marget, young and trim and cold; and Bob watching her, sulking by a door. She saw Thomas, the Thomas she had lost, who was no more the man she had married than any in the room. What that Thomas had given her she would never find again, the breathless vision of the unexplored. The dogged face, the brooding, pleading eyes, the touch of a spirit strange to her as yet—even the memory of them caught her by the throat. She found her heart beating and her cheek grown hot. This life in her hands to crown or throw away ... no, there was never another moment quite like that. The little sordidness came creeping back. “I wish Marget could clap eyes on the old man now!” “Ay, so do I!” Kit waved again. “Whisht, will ye! I’m just off.” “Right, Father! We’re ready.” “We’re all set.” “Now!” He lifted his bow high, and the atmosphere tightened like a string. It was like waiting for the striking of a flame, the first touch of lips, or the dead coming out of a grave. All the grace of youth was in the curve of his arm; the certainty of his knowledge in his thrilling finger-tips. He leaned his ear to the fiddle as to a secret bound to be told. His face held expression behind expression, like the endless perspective of images in a pool, but at the back of all was the passionate gravity of the artist at his task. Old as he was, the sense of power that was strong in the others was stronger far in him. All who had ever danced to his piping waited upon his nod; feet by the hundred ached for the loosed tune. Now, now, before all the gods he was a god, as well....