"_John the beau was walking home_,
_When he met with Sally Dover_,
_He kissed her once, he kissed her twice_,
_And he kissed her three times over_."
It seemed to Loveday that the whole world was dancing. The faces of the
crowd, the bobbing ringlets, swelling skirts, the bright eyes and bright
instruments, the houses that peered at her with their polished panes,
all danced in a mad haze of mingled light and blackness. Sun, moon and
stars joined in, heads and feet whirled so madly that none could have
said which was upper-most. Creation was a-dancing, and she alone stood
to be mocked at in a reeling world. This was the merry measure she had
striven to join! She must have been mad indeed!
Turning blindly, she ran through the crowd that gave at her approach,
and all day the dancing went on without her. The flutter of her
blasphemous sash did not profane the sunlight in the streets of
Bugletown, nor pollute with its passing the houses of the good wives.
Like a swallow's wing, it had but flashed across the ordered ways and
was gone.
Yet Loveday's ambition was, after all, fulfilled that day. For she
danced--and danced a measure she could not have trod without the white
satin sash.... Good folk in Bugletown footed it down the cobbled
streets, and through paved kitchens; Loveday danced a finer step on
insubstantial ether, into realms more vast. Were those realms dark for
her, thus violated by her enforced entry of them? Who can say, save
those folk of Bugletown who knew that to her first crime she had added
a second even greater?
They found her next day in the wood; the wind had risen, and blew
against her skirts, so that her feet moved gently as though yet tracing
their phantom paces upon the airy floors.
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