Out of the shadow of the temple a professional line of dancers files into the moonlight and as suddenly halts,—­all young women or girls, clad in their choicest attire; the tallest leads; her comrades follow in order of stature.  Little maids of ten or twelve years compose the end of the procession.  Figures lightly poised as birds,—­figures that somehow recall the dreams of shapes circling about certain antique vases; those charming Japanese robes, close-clinging about the knees, might seem, but for the great fantastic drooping sleeves, and the curious broad girdles confining them, designed after the drawing of some Greek or Etruscan artist.  And, at another tap of the drum, there begins a performance impossible to picture in words, something unimaginable, phantasmal,—­a dance, an astonishment.

All together glide the right foot forward one pace, without lifting the sandal from the ground, and extend both hands to the right, with a strange floating motion and a smiling, mysterious obeisance.  Then the right foot is drawn back, with a repetition of the waving of hands and the mysterious bow.  Then all advance the left foot and repeat the previous movements, half-turning to the left.  Then all take two gliding paces forward, with a single simultaneous soft clap of the hands, and the first performance is reiterated, alternately to the right and left; all the sandaled feet gliding together, all the supple hands waving together, all the pliant bodies bowing and swaying together.  And so slowly, weirdly, the processional movement changes into a great round, circling about the moon-lit court and around the voiceless crowd of spectators.

And always the white hands sinuously wave together, as if weaving spells, alternately without and within the round, now with palms upward, now with palms downward; and all the elfish sleeves hover duskily together, with a shadowing as of wings; and all the feet poise together with such a rhythm of complex motion, that, in watching it, one feels a sensation of hypnotism—­as while striving to watch a flowing and shimmering of water.

And this soporous allurement is intensified by a dead hush.  No one speaks, not even a spectator.  And, in the long intervals between the soft clapping of hands, one hears only the shrilling of the crickets in the trees, and the shu-shu of sandals, lightly stirring the dust.  Unto what, I ask myself, may this be likened?  Unto nothing; yet it suggests some fancy of somnambulism,—­dreamers, who dream themselves flying, dreaming upon their feet.

And there comes to me the thought that I am looking at something immemorially old, something belonging to the unrecorded beginning of this Oriental life, perhaps to the crepuscular Kamiyo itself, to the magical Age of the Gods; a symbolism of motion whereof the meaning has been forgotten for innumerable years.  Yet more and more unreal the spectacle appears, with silent smilings, with its silent bowings, as if obeisance to watchers invisible; and I find myself wondering whether, were I to utter but a whisper, all would not vanish forever, save the gray mouldering court and the desolate temple, and the broken statue of Jizo, smiling always the same mysterious smile I see upon the faces of the dancers.