Yet the free-lovers dancing there seemed both sadness and mockery. Dancing is shimmer. Satin and silk and white slippers. Rooms white and gold. Massed flowers. Rapt faces to whom problems and socialism are unknown. Youth, and an audience of elderly parents and friends. It seems mockery for these people with their brains full of ideas and their bodies decked in protests, to dance. Dancing brings an endlessness in which nothing matters but to go on dancing—in a room, till the walls disappear—in the open, till the sky, moving as you dance, seems to cleave and let you through. 2 People from South Place, gravely circling. “That’s not dancing, it’s the Ethical Movement.” Shaw. The darling. Religiously enduring. Coming to Lycurgan gatherings as others go to church. 3 The ring, made by those who remained, extended when their linked hands were stretched at arm’s length, all the way round the large room. These people were part of the crowd that had stood shouting the refrains of the folk-songs led by the woman on the estrade with the determined voice. Seen thus they had seemed threatening, inhuman; and _édition de luxe_ of the noisy elements in a street crowd. And more threatening, because they were driven by ideas. The massed effect of djibbêhs and tweeds and dress-suits, bellowing, was of a wilful culture banded together in defiance of a world it could not see. But now, standing ringed round the room with linked hands they were charming. Innocent; children linked for a game, dependent on each other. In the midst of them, somehow in the centre to which all their faces were turned, was something beyond the reach of socialism. It sounded even in the dismal notes of _Auld Lang Syne_ with its suggestion of mournful survival from a golden past. To stand thus linked and singing was to lose the weight of individuality and keep its essence, its queer power of being one with every one alive. But it was also embarrassing. Made an embarrassment that everyone had to share. For the thread of song was stronger than anyone there. Even those who meeting known eyes above an unusually opened mouth, or imagining themselves to be objects of hilarious scrutiny, tried to be individually funny, were presently overwhelmed and drawn along. The thin beginning on a few voices had swelled to a unison of varying octaves and strengths. She heard her own voice within it and felt as she sang how short and wavering and shapeless was her life, and short and wavering even the most shapely lives about her. As the dismal refrain was lifting its third monotonous howl there came from behind her, where a door opened on to a cloakroom, a woman’s voice angry, deep and emphatic, like an ox roaring at a gate. Her hand was torn from her nearest companion’s and the newcomer was in the ring singing with stern lustiness below a hat askew. The last words of the song echoed round the room upon the might of her voice.