Leaving myself by the fire to dance in moonlight

A little party of people were gathered together in a large room. It was night-time, lamps were lighted, and some of the older ones were playing "patience." I was sitting near the fire with a book reading, and looking out through the long windows which opened on to a wide lawn flooded with moonlight beyond which the arches of a cloister could be seen. A number of girls and boys were dancing on the lawn; as I watched the dancing figures I slipped away from "myself" and ran out to join them; I glanced back from the open window for a moment at the group under the lamplight, at the patience players, and at myself sitting sedately in my low chair with my book open on my knee.

We danced hand in hand in a long chain running very lightly and fast, passing in and out of the shadows of the arches, and out into the moonlit spaces again. The lightness and slenderness of my body delighted me, and as I looked down at my feet I said, laughing, "The old ones by the fire would think that these silk shoes were much too thin for dancing at night upon the grass." A youth danced by my side, but he was without importance in the dream and did not interest me; "only," I thought, "I should not be at all in the movement if I were partnerless." A girl in the chain of dancers began to tell a story, another took up the recital, and so the dream went on.