But when I sit in the Gordon Craig Theatre, strangers to the right and left of me, the theatre darkened and the stage a temple steps, the Avanel emerges that has refused so many times to come forth at my petition. Her face and carriage convey the sibyl, the saint, the mother of great sages of our city and the muse of poets of our city. She hardly knows this, for the innocence of her unspoiled youth tells its gentle, overwhelming story. As for the alleged dance, it is more procession than anything else: boys and girls, men and women, moving to varied chants or measured silences or amid wonderful and measured lights. There is no very direct allusion to the Birthday of St. Scribe. Old political parades are suggested and historical triumphs, but mostly the type of parade that might be held of a Sunday before a religious service, ending at a shrine or an altar. There are ceremonies from the book of St. Scribe of the Shrines. His favorite shrines are suggested, beginning with the Grave of Lincoln at Oak Ridge. The dancers are crowned with Apple-Amaranth leaves, which are larger than ordinary apple-leaves and a paler green. Avanel’s part in the pageantry is but that of a leader and partner of the chief marching man, young Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Third. Avanel is closely followed in glory and significance by the whole company. And Michael deftly takes his place as a proper background for Avanel, for which I thank him. Therefore when Avanel sits with me a little by her open fire tonight, all tired out and very solemn, she knows she has vindicated herself in my eyes a little and she tosses her head and wears jauntily one young green Apple-Amaranth leaf which still gleams brightly in her black hair. She asks, as a child: “Did it seem as though we were at shrines together or walking in the woods together?” And so I answer: “I have never yet been at any of these shrines but that of Lincoln and that many, many years ago. But it did seem as though we were walking in the woods together among the very oldest trees. I want to go to shrines with you soon.” And Avanel asks me: “Do you think we will get on better in woods?” And so I answer, not quite to the point: “A tree a thousand years old has leaves in the spring, as green as when a sapling. But if my dust had lived to this hour, it would have been the semblance of a palsied man, a horror more than grave clothes. Such as I am, I pray to the God of Heaven that I may be the green leaf in your hair.” May 16:—I find myself walking in the shadows, where there is neither Springfield nor Jerusalem nor any other known place, where there is neither calendar nor clock nor sun. The clouds of meditation are beneath my feet, storm overhead. One flash of lightning lasts for an eternity and the thunder roll is as long.