III

In autumn she danced with the falling leaves and with the brisk flurries and eddying gusts of the wind’s breath that carried them along. Barefoot she danced over the morning frost in the glens and through the hills above the meadows as the warming fingers of the rising sun reached down to touch her through the trees. She danced until the daylight, chill but bright, faded early from the late afternoon sky.

“To dance with the leaves in the wind, with the frost in the glens, and with the fading daylight,” said the Voice, “is to dance with me. And yet I am not to be found in the leaves nor in the wind; not in the frost nor in the trees of the field; neither in the cold stillness of the fading light of day.”

“To dance with you,” she answered back, “is all my joy and has also become my life.”

And so she passed her days in wonder and contentment.

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