E. Nesbit

“ Sylvia was fast nearing the point where she must either weaken and break down from overwork, or harden and crystallise into a talented professional. So far her highest, deepest, most irresistible charm had been that she was an amateur of genius. ”

“ As usual in August, “London was empty”; but it was crowded all the same, crowded with people who wanted to see Sylvia dance. For a heart in the condition which we term broken, there is no medicine like work—indeed, it is the best opiate in the world for all pain, except the pain of overwork itself.
Drug-taking is dangerous, as all men know, because of the hold that the drug takes upon one’s nerves and one’s will. Life without the drug soon grows to seem not worth having. Presently the only thing worth having in life appears to be the drug. Later the life is the drug—and nothing else. ”

“ When you have nursed for eight years, even in a half-forgotten corner of your mind or heart, the idea of an incomparable girl-child who is all that time growing into a woman and who will, by all the rules of development, some day be an incomparable princess ”

“ It is odd, by the way—so odd that in age people forget how natural that oddness is to youth—it is odd that a man and woman, who a fortnight ago did not know each other’s names, should, in a few short days, become so much to each other that to know that they must part, probably forever, hurts like having a hand cut off. ”

“ A CHILD DANCED ON THE SEASHORE Then should come the forest dance—but a new forest dance, where her memories would not be of the New Forest, but of trees nearer home, and of the flowers that grow by a Kentish river. ”

“ One man, white-robed, gold-haired, with rapt devotional face, playing on a stringed instrument—I think it was a zither, but the management called it on the programmes a psaltery—and between the pillars and the white-robed death-still priests a woman—dancing with stately, beautiful, slow movements, and the face, men said, of an angel: dancing because dancing was the only way in which her soul and body together could express the worship of all things good and beautiful which filled her soul and inspired it. ”

“ He had read yesterday’s paper if not to-day’s—yesterday’s paper, and the account of the woman who drowned herself and her five children, and he knew that people don’t kill themselves and leave notes to say they’ve done it because they’re starving just to advance the interests of this or that political party. But it is seldom worthwhile to argue with one’s uncle. ”

“ Now the people who write adulation to dancers are not usually in mourning mood. Sylvia therefore decided that here was a begging letter. And being kind-hearted and already dressed in the seaweed tunic of her sea-dance, and having nothing to do till her call came, which was delayed by a triple encore to a man who sang comic songs standing on his head on the back of a pig, she opened it. ”

“ And he could not be expected, perhaps, to know that day by day life became more and more difficult to her just because she could not see him.
“He might at least have come to the theatre once or twice,” she told herself. Because you have parted with your lover for ever, and are “never going to see him anymore,” you do not therefore desire that he should accept the good-bye so literally as never even to try to see you, especially when you are to be seen, for a shilling, by any man who has the shilling to pay. ”

“ Twenty years ago he was prominently before the public, but he retired into private life unable to bear the bitter jealousies and trivial annoyances incident to his profession, and has since his retirement lived almost the life of a hermit among his books, his flowers, and his beloved music. ”

“ Templar went on coolly; “these are now removed. My relations wish to see Madame Sylvia. And I have promised to get them a box.”
“A line from the lady might make some difference,” the Management admitted.
“That’s just it,” said Templar. “She doesn’t know. And I want to tell her myself. It’s a rather romantic business altogether. You see, we parted forever, and now it’s all right. And she doesn’t know. If I tell her before the performance it might upset her—prevent her dancing or something. I shall sit well back in the box—she won’t see me—and then tell her afterwards. ”