spell a message by touching letters. Quicker and quicker, for minute
after minute, grew the dance, swifter and swifter the swing of the light
blue drapery as the priestess, with eager face and staring eyes, swung
panting round upon her orbit, and redder and redder over the city tops
rose the circumference of the earth. It seemed to me all the silent
multitude were breathing heavily as we watched that giddy dance, and
whatever THEY felt, all my own senses seemed to be winding up upon that
revolving figure as thread winds on a spindle.

"When will she stop?" I whispered to my friend under my breath.

"When the earth-star rests in the roof-niche of the temple it is
climbing," she answered back.

"And then?"

"On the tripod is a globe of water. In it she will see the destiny of the
year, and will tell us. The whiter the water stays, the better for us;
it never varies from white. But we must not talk; see! she is stopping."

And as I looked back, the dance was certainly ebbing now with such
smoothly decreasing undulations, that every heart began to beat calmer
in response. There was a minute or two of such slow cessation, and then
to say she stopped were too gross a description. Motion rather died away
from her, and the priestess grounded as smoothly as a ship grounds in
fine weather on a sandy bank. There she was at last, crouched behind
the tripod, one corner of the cloth covering it grasped in her hand,
and her eyes fixed on the shining round just poised upon the distant run.

Keenly the girl watched it slide into zenith, then the cloth was snatched