Eventually Persis set a two-step record whirling on the machine. Forbes asked her to dance with him. As they were passing one of the doors a little gust of summer-night air blew upon them so appealingly that Forbes swung Persis across the sill and stepped out into the cloister, where the moonlight streamed like a distant searchlight.
The music followed them, but muffled, by the pat of their feet along the tiled floor. To silence this noise Forbes danced across the margin of stone out upon the smooth, short, silent grass. Persis made no resistance, and he danced always a little deeper into the lawn, a little farther from the house. He danced her round the inky plumes of a cluster of cedars. These shut out the lights from the door. The music was quite lost here, and Persis hummed the tune herself; seemed to croon it into his very heart.
The music must have stopped in the house long before they knew it, and some one must have put on a disk in whose hard-rubber surface was embedded the voice of Sembrich singing a waltz-song of Chopin's.
This angelic melody floated on the air as if it came from nowhere and everywhere, and Forbes and Persis fell into the swift rhythm of it. They must needs dance furiously fast to keep up; but the music brought with it some of its own resistless energy.
Out here in this moon-world they seemed to be utterly aloof from the earth. They seemed to whirl like twin stars in a cosmic dance to the music of the spheres, the song the stars sing together. The Milky Way was but moonlit dew on the lawn of the sky. And they darted between the planets in a divine rhythm on a vast orbit, until at last a breathlessness of soul and body compelled Persis to end the occult rite.
The moonlight fell about her in a magic veil, and Forbes could not let her go. He caught her closer to him. But before his lips could brush her cheek, she broke his clasp and said:
"We must get back."
"Oh, please!" he implored.
"The others will wonder."
"What of it?"