Desiring to watch Frau von Eckthum more conveniently (for I assure you it was a pretty sight to see her grace, and how the same tune that made my wife whirl moved her to nothing more ruffling than an appearance of being wafted) and also in order to be at hand should Jellaby become too tactless, I went down to where our party seemed to be gathered in a knot and took up my position near them against another portion of the wall. I had hardly done so before they seemed to have melted away to the upper end. As they did not come back I presently strolled after them. They then appeared to melt back again to the bottom. It was very odd. It was almost like an optical illusion. When I went up, they went down; when I went down, they went up. I felt at last as one may feel who plays at see-saw, and began to doubt whether I were really on firm ground--on _terra cotta_, as I (amusingly, I thought) called it to Edelgard when we alighted from the steamer at Queenboro’, endeavouring to restore her spirits and make her laugh. (Quite in vain I may add, which inclined me to wonder, I remember, whether the illiteracy which is one of the leading characteristics of people’s wives had made it impossible for her to understand even so simple a classical play on words as that. In the train I realized that it was not illiteracy but the crossing; and I will say for Edelgard that up to the time the English spirit of criticism got, like a devastating microbe, hold of her German womanliness, she had invariably laughed when I chose to jest.) But gradually the profitless see-sawing began to tire me. The dance ended, another began, and still my little white-bloused friend had not once been within reach. I made a determined effort to get to her in the pauses between the dances in order to offer to break the German rule on her behalf and give her one dance (for I fancy she was vexed that I did not) and also to help her out of the clutches of Jellaby, but I might as well have tried to dance with and help a moonbeam. She was here, she was there, she was everywhere, except where I happened to be. Once I had almost achieved success when, just as I was sure of her, she ran up to the ghost resting at that moment from its labours and embarked in an apparently endless and absorbing discussion with it, deaf and blind to all beside; and as I had made up my mind that nothing would induce me to extend my Raggett acquaintance by causing myself to be introduced to the psychical phenomenon bearing that name, I was forced to retreat.