Marcus Clarke

“ To lovely women, Sporboy was ever as gentle as the gazelle.
"Pray"--suddenly wheeling round upon the music-stool and, liquorishly, facing her--"have you heard lately from your sainted MOTHER, ma'am?"
They say that a creature shot through the heart often leaps into the air before it falls dead. Mademoiselle Pauline must have received at that instant some such fatal wound, for she leapt to her feet, standing for an instant gazing wildly at us, and then sank back into her seat, speechless and pale. ”

“ When I was fifteen I was a woman. I am thirty now, and do you think that fifteen years of sordid cares and desperate strifes have led me to love my art--as you call it? An art! It is an art. But you, and men like you, have made a trade of it--a trade in which bare bosoms and blonde hair fetch the highest prices. ”

“ Sporboy had conquered, for he walked away humming, and in a few minutes I saw him pass out of the door below me, and--with no trace of the debauch of last night upon him--call out to the waiter, "Mademoiselle has asked me to breakfast, Chips. When the heart of a man is oppressed with cares, the mists are dispelled when a woman appears! ”