At intervals a couple would approach the doorway for air, and the haze no longer veiling their features, the demigods resolved themselves into the homely personalities of her own next-door neighbours.  Could Trantridge in two or three short hours have metamorphosed itself thus madly!

Some Sileni of the throng sat on benches and hay-trusses by the wall; and one of them recognized her.

“The maids don’t think it respectable to dance at The Flower-de-Luce,” he explained.  “They don’t like to let everybody see which be their fancy-men.  Besides, the house sometimes shuts up just when their jints begin to get greased.  So we come here and send out for liquor.”

“But when be any of you going home?” asked Tess with some anxiety.

“Now—­a’most directly.  This is all but the last jig.”

She waited.  The reel drew to a close, and some of the party were in the mind of starting.  But others would not, and another dance was formed.  This surely would end it, thought Tess.  But it merged in yet another.  She became restless and uneasy; yet, having waited so long, it was necessary to wait longer; on account of the fair the roads were dotted with roving characters of possibly ill intent; and, though not fearful of measurable dangers, she feared the unknown.  Had she been near Marlott she would have had less dread.

“Don’t ye be nervous, my dear good soul,” expostulated, between his coughs, a young man with a wet face and his straw hat so far back upon his head that the brim encircled it like the nimbus of a saint.  “What’s yer hurry?  To-morrow is Sunday, thank God, and we can sleep it off in church-time.  Now, have a turn with me?”

She did not abhor dancing, but she was not going to dance here.  The movement grew more passionate:  the fiddlers behind the luminous pillar of cloud now and then varied the air by playing on the wrong side of the bridge or with the back of the bow.  But it did not matter; the panting shapes spun onwards.

They did not vary their partners if their inclination were to stick to previous ones.  Changing partners simply meant that a satisfactory choice had not as yet been arrived at by one or other of the pair, and by this time every couple had been suitably matched.  It was then that the ecstasy and the dream began, in which emotion was the matter of the universe, and matter but an adventitious intrusion likely to hinder you from spinning where you wanted to spin.

Suddenly there was a dull thump on the ground:  a couple had fallen, and lay in a mixed heap.  The next couple, unable to check its progress, came toppling over the obstacle.  An inner cloud of dust rose around the prostrate figures amid the general one of the room, in which a twitching entanglement of arms and legs was discernible.

“You shall catch it for this, my gentleman, when you get home!” burst in female accents from the human heap—­those of the unhappy partner of the man whose clumsiness had caused the mishap; she happened also to be his recently married wife, in which assortment there was nothing unusual at Trantridge as long as any affection remained between wedded couples; and, indeed, it was not uncustomary in their later lives, to avoid making odd lots of the single people between whom there might be a warm understanding.