that was black had grown yellow, and empires moved their border, as
though they were but drifts of leaves. The rest of the book contained
symbols of form, and sound, and colour, and their attribution to
divinities and demons, so that the initiate might fashion a shape for
any divinity or any demon, and be as powerful as Avicenna among those
who live under the roots of tears and of laughter.




IV


A couple of hours after Sunset Michael Robartes returned and told me
that I would have to learn the steps of an exceedingly antique dance,
because before my initiation could be perfected I had to join three
times in a magical dance, for rhythm was the wheel of Eternity, on
which alone the transient and accidental could be broken, and the
spirit set free. I found that the steps, which were simple enough,
resembled certain antique Greek dances, and having been a good dancer
in my youth and the master of many curious Gaelic steps, I soon had
them in my memory. He then robed me and himself in a costume which
suggested by its shape both Greece and Egypt, but by its crimson
colour a more passionate life than theirs; and having put into my
hands a little chainless censer of bronze, wrought into the likeness
of a rose, by some modern craftsman, he told me to open a small door
opposite to the door by which I had entered. I put my hand to the
handle, but the moment I did so the fumes of the incense, helped
perhaps by his mysterious glamour, made me fall again into a dream,
in which I seemed to be a mask, lying on the counter of a little