Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 01.djvu/107

Rh Bridge and on the crossings of London. There was the same mysterious pantomime, the same passionate leaps, the same Bacchic casting back of the head, many times the same bending down to the earth, as if listening to what was being said below, then the old trembling, the growing pale, the frozen stillness, and yet again the listening with the ear inclined. And she also rubbed her hands as if washing them. At last she seemed to again cast her deep, painful, imploring glance at me, but it was only in the features of her deathly pale face that I recognised the glance, not in her eyes, for they were closed. The music sounded ever softer, the drum-mother and the dwarf growing paler, dimmer, and whirling away like mist, at last disappeared altogether, but Laurence remained as before, dancing with closed eyes. This dancing, as if blind, in the silent room by night, gave the beautiful creature such a ghostly air that I often shuddered, and was heartily glad when she ceased to dance, and glided and slipped, as softly as she had flown away, back into my arms.

"Certainly the sight of this scene was not agreeable. But man accustoms himself to everything, and it is possible that the unearthly mystery of this woman gave her a peculiar charm, which mingled with my feelings a terrible tenderness—enough that in a few weeks I was no