Lizard-like, a
man lies along a low wall, listening to the poet's story. But why
describe a picture so well known? Why mention it at all? Only because
its design intruded itself, spoiling my dream, an abortive idea that I
dimly perceived in Nature without being able to grasp it; an illusive
suggestion for a picture was passing by me, and so eager was my
pursuit of the vision that there was no strength in me to ask Mildred
to play. True that the sound of her violin might help me, but it must
happen accidentally, just as everything else was happening, without
sequence, without logic. At that moment my ear caught the sound of
violin-playing; some dance measure of old time was being played, and
in the sunlit interspace three women appeared dancing a gavotte,
advancing and retiring through the light and shade. The one who played
the violin leaned sometimes against a tree, and sometimes she joined
the others, playing as she danced.
"I know that gavotte. Come, let us go to them. I'll play for them if
they'll let me."
Very soon the woman who played the violin seemed to recognise Mildred
as a better player than herself. She handed her fiddle to a bystander
and the gavotte proceeded, the three old ladies bowing and holding up
their skirts and pointing their toes with the grace of bygone times.
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