you; and your only prayer was he might come ere your dancing grew comic.

Like the smell of the roses to Nancy, hawking them through the hot
streets, must the stifling atmosphere of love have been to you. The song
of passion, how monotonous in your ears, sung now by the young and now
by the old; now shouted, now whined, now shrieked; but ever the one
strident tune. Do you remember when first you heard it? You dreamt it
the morning hymn of Heaven. You came to think it the dance music of
Hell, ground from a cracked hurdy-gurdy, lent out by the Devil on hire.

An evil race we must have seemed to you, Dolly Faustine, as to some Old
Bailey lawyer. You saw but one side of us. You lived in a world upside
down, where the leaves and the blossoms were hidden, and only the roots
saw your day. You imagined the worm-beslimed fibres the plant, and
all things beautiful you deemed cant. Chivalry, love, honour! how you
laughed at the lying words. You knew the truth--as you thought: aye,
half the truth. We were swine while your spell was upon us, Daughter of
Circe, and you, not knowing your island secret, deemed it our natural
shape.

No wonder, Dolly, your battered waxen face is stamped with an angry
sneer. The Hero, who eventually came into his estates amid the plaudits
of the Pit, while you were left to die in the streets! you remembered,
but the house had forgotten those earlier scenes in always wicked Paris.
The good friend of the family, the breezy man of the world, the Deus ex
Machina of the play, who was so good to everybody, whom everybody loved!
aye, YOU loved him once--but that was in the Prologue. In the Play
proper, he was respectable. (How you loathed that word, that meant to
you all you vainly longed for!) To him the Prologue was a period past
and dead; a memory, giving flavour to his life. To you, it was the
First Act of the Play, shaping all the others. His sins the house had
forgotten: at yours, they held up their hands in horror. No wonder the
sneer lies on your waxen lips.

Never mind, Dolly; it was a stupid house. Next time, perhaps, you will
play a better part; and then they will cheer, instead of hissing you.
You were wasted, I am inclined to think, on modern comedy. You should
have been cast for the heroine of some old-world tragedy. The strength
of character, the courage, the power of self-forgetfulness, the
enthusiasm were yours: it was the part that was lacking. You might have
worn the mantle of a Judith,