THE FAERY YEAR 



floor, one fit for fauns and fairies, with illuminations 

 to match. 



First, at nine o'clock, hardly dusk, when the 

 dancing began, there was the gold taper of Mars 

 in the awful blue to the south. Ten minutes 

 after, when the ball was in full swing it was over, 

 practically, before ten o'clock, only a few stragglers 

 keeping it going till dark Altair and Vega, those 

 two glorious stars of the midsummer evening, 

 caught the eye by their sparkle ; while Capella 

 flashed at white heat out of the baths of colour in 

 the north-west. To see a star of the first magni- 

 tude twinkle or glitter any clear sky at night 

 serves ; to see the rarer white flash of a star, one 

 must look into the after-glow of a serene summer 

 evening, somewhere above the violet and topaz, and 

 in that zone of unnamed colour in which faint blue 

 and saffron mingle. 



The Moths' Dance 



In this scene, then, the ghost moths held their 

 revels. Many more were on the wing than a week 

 before, though the satin of some of their ball dresses 

 was losing its sheen. Most of the dancers were 

 males, but here and there a female ghost moth 

 would join in. The movements of one or two of 

 the females which I watched were slightly different 

 from those of the other sex. She seemed less 

 erratic in her darting about. She would hang 



