They were dressed in many-coloured garments
and danced a folk dance. As McGregor watched a light began to creep
back into his eyes. The women who now danced were unlike her who had
reminded him of Margaret Ormsby. They were short of stature and there
was something rugged in their faces. Back and forth across the
platform they moved in masses. By their dancing they were striving to
convey a message. A thought came to McGregor. "It is the dance of
labour," he muttered. "Here in this garden it is corrupted but the
note of labour is not lost. There is a hint of it left in these
figures who toil even as they dance."
McGregor moved away from the shadows of the pillar and stood, hat in
hand, beneath the garden lights waiting as though for a call out of
the ranks of the dancers. How furiously they worked. How the bodies
twisted and squirmed. Out of sympathy with their efforts sweat
appeared on the face of the man who stood watching. "What a storm must
be going on just below the surface of labour," he muttered.
"Everywhere dumb brutalised men and women must be waiting for
something, not knowing what they want. I will stick to my purpose but
I will not give up Margaret," he said aloud, turning and half running
out of the garden and into the street.
In his sleep that night McGregor dreamed of a new world, a world of
soft phrases and gentle hands that stilled the rising brute in man.
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