“Was there still another set of fairies, invisible to the eye? I felt myself lifted by unseen arms, and could feel harmonious breaths around me like an atmosphere which I was inhaling through every pore, and which was swelling every fibre with a thrill of lightness, until I only touched the ground like a bird ready to fly. I raised the wand, and a strain from an unseen band lifted on its wings the whole assembly surrounding the green, who nodded, and waved, and swayed with the opening movement as if catching the time of a tune to which they were to dance; the flute and the violin catching, like a flame, from one to the other, the tortuous wreathing of the bass-viol, with labored ease possessing their limbs, and the bugle and the trumpet, with a gush of melody in which all the rest joined, leaving their graceful heads floating in the loveliest confusion of harmony. Then a pause fell like a shadow, pointing across the greensward; and when it ended, faint as figures in a deep valley, burst forth a chorus of tiny voices, and there were the fairies themselves, in groups on groups, and wreath involved in wreath, dancing to their own song, countless as the fireflies in a meadow on a summer evening. “'If I were only small enough to dance with them!' said I, listening so intently that I felt myself contracting into the compass of their song, and the wand diminishing in my hand, till there we were, myself and the loveliest little fairy queen dancing together through the mazes of the tiny troop, bewildered by the grace of the faces that passed us like dreams of beauty, and the soft crush of bewitching dresses that wafted, as they swept by us, such dizzy perfumes as only the bee or the butterfly could imagine. The songs to which we danced, every group singing a different one, and yet all in harmony, were without words; but our feet, pattering, innumerable as the drops of a silver rain, or the softest piano and flute accompaniment, echoed with their meaning, and every step was the understanding of emotions, for which language had no name. For we were so slight and pure that there was no interval between the music and the meaning, but our forms, which were only the harmony and enjoyment of both, sparkling into life each moment our footsteps touched the ground. “'The dance for thought, the waltz for love,' said my fairy queen, looking at me with velvet eyes, and wreathing her arms around my waist. Then we floated off on the violin accompaniment, that seemed to fly from under our feet at every step, gliding through the sinuous mazes of a movement interweaving and unfolding into newer and newer combinations, till we swam in a delirium of uncomprehended harmony, buoyed up so lightly, as if on half-open wings, that our feet only occasionally touched the ground to remind us of the earth. “'O, let us fly!' I exclaimed. “'The fairies belong to the earth, like yourselves,' she answered; 'but would you learn the dance?'