from a distance, first by a single voice; but then another took it up,
and another; and then another. Slowly so the soft night was filled
with musical cries which quavered about me as fitfully as fire-flies
gleam and glance in all quarters of a garden of olive-trees. It was
enchantment to the ear, a ravishing sound; but it was my eyes which
claimed me now, for soon I saw them coming from all quarters. Or
rather, I saw them there, for I can't say definitely that I saw any
one of them on the way. It is truer to say that I looked and they were
there. Where had been one were now two. Now two were five; now five
were a company; now the company was a host. I have no idea how many
there were of them at any time; but when they joined hands and set to
whirling in a ring they seemed to me to stretch round Parliament Hill
in an endless chain.

How can I be particular about them? They were of both sexes--that was
put beyond doubt; they were garbed as the first of them in something
translucent and grey. It had been quite easy in the lamplight to see
the bare form of the woman whom I first saw in Gaylord's Rents. It was
plain to me that her companions were in the same kind of dress. I
don't think they had girdles; I think their arms and legs were bare. I
should describe the garment as a sleeveless smock to the knees, or
perhaps, more justly, as a sack of silky gauze with a hole for the
head and two for the arms. That was the effect of it. It hung straight
and took the folds natural to it. It was so light that it clung
closely to the body where it met the air. What it was made of I have
no notion; but it was transparent or nearly so. I am pretty sure that
its own colour was grey.

They greeted each other; they flitted about from group to group
greeting; and they greeted by touching, sometimes with their hands,