E. Nesbit

“ You can understand. Every curve of your hair, every movement of your lips, every line of your wonderfully conceived raiment tells me that you at least can understand.”
“What I don’t understand,” said Daphne, intentionally stolid, “is how you make a dinner party out of a picture.”
“Ah, now you’re laughing at me,” he said. “The delicious laughter of the gods! There will be other foods—concessions to the vile body, Miss Carmichael, but the little feast is really sacrificial. It is a love-feast. ”

“ The pavements are dry and dusty, and her thin bronze shoes will take no harm. Claud walks with her, tall and effective, with a general air of there being nothing to fear while he is with her. Doris, shiny with scented soap—a horribly strong-smelling pink kind shaped like a baby, to buy which in the attractive bazaars of Googe Street she has wheedled her sister out of twopence—lies in her white nightgown determined to keep awake till Daphne comes home from the “real live dinner-party.” ”

“ Henry clever?” she found herself saying.
“Clever? But that’s not the word, my dearest Miss Carmichael.” (Daphne looked round apprehensively, but all the other guests were talking together. No one was listening.) “Henry is The Man. He is an artist. That is to say he is an inspired craftsman—the noblest work of God. Don’t you think so?”
Daphne managed to say that she had not thought much about it.
“Ah,” said the host, rolling his round eyes impressively, “but it is of these things that we must think – if we would save our souls. Henry has a message, a great message, to the world. ”

“ Henry is late, isn’t he?” was absolutely the best Daphne could do on her side.
“Time,” said her astonishing host, “is only a mode of thought. So is space. Is it not wonderful to feel that Henry is here now, in substance, though the accidents we call Henry are probably even now involved in some street accident—the breakdown of a cab, or the sudden soul-sickness of a motor-bus.”
Daphne laughed—aloud. The other guests looked enviously as her. One who could find food for laughter in Seddon’s talk must indeed, they felt, be fresh from the mint of the gods. ”

“ Daphne knew, at any rate, in what spirit he had elected to be not with them.
“All the little plans,” Seddon purred, “all the little nuances, that have occupied me ever since I purchased the masterpiece and conceived the master-idea of this dinner party. . . . Ah, don’t refuse an anchovy-olive, Miss Carmichael. They’re from a little recipe of my own. We can find the beautiful in all things. Can we not?”
“Seddon’s got taste, confound him,” Claud was murmuring to Green Eyes.
“He’s got Miss Carmichael at present. Don’t scowl like a bandit. After all, it’s his dinner-party.” ”

“ Isn’t she ripping tonight?”
“She always is,” said Green Eyes, “no matter what her name is.”
“Ah,” said Claud, “but this is the real thing.”
“I know,” said Green Eyes, “it always is the real thing. I wonder why you all put up with Henry in the way you do? If a man behaved like that to me I should kick him, if I were a man.” ”

“ Henry so very slightly,” was all she found to say.
“Friendship isn’t measured by its length, like crêpe-de-Chine,” he said. “I insist, dearest Miss Carmichael, that the fineness of your nature has, in no matter how short a time, pierced to the shrine to which I have won my clumsy way, after blundering years misspent before other altars.”
The absurd little man. The horribly acute clear-sighted little man!
“Everyone,” said Miss Carmichael, “must admire Mr. Henry’s genius.”
“And he is the best of fellows.” Seddon, to Daphne’s breathless relief, got away on this from the associative personal note. ”

“ Behold her, secure in the assurance of her mirror that she looks “somebody in particular and not just anybody,” crushing her undisplayed flounces into one hand and holding lightly in the other the not-to-be-crushed outer dress which will, to the world, be her sole covering—all flounces severely unified by its long straight lines. ”

“ The trap-door was open. The lamp-light made its resting place a bright square.
“I’m afraid I’m very late, Mrs. Delarue,” she said to the figure that sat by the bed in the dim light of one candle. “I’m so sorry.”
“Mrs. Delarue has gone home,” said the figure, rising and coming toward her—a figure in a dream, in a dream that had been Daphne’s nightmare for weeks. For the figure was a ghost from the past—from that too recent past whose setting was Laburnum Villa.
Daphne caught up the candle and held it so that the light fell full on the ghost’s face. ”

“ And one loves so many people—so intensely. It’s only tonight that I see you—but I love you—you feel that, don’t you? It’s the kind of love that makes life possible. I don’t ask anything of you—I don’t even want anything of you. ”

“ BEHOLD now Daphne taking, in her new white gown with the green and gold embroidery, the centre of her little stage. Subsidiary characters, Claud, Green Eyes, a grateful Russian, and “That Man” of whom gratitude could not be affirmed. Also her host, unknown, and the unknown other guests. ”