but without being touched by all
that passed over her little soul so near to earth.

Every year, in the summer, she used to go to stay for a few days with
her godmother, Constance Crenmitz, the elder Crenmitz, whom all Europe
had called for so long "the famous dancer," and who lived in peaceful
retirement at Fontainebleau.

The arrival of the "little demon" used to bring into the life of the old
dancer an element of disturbance from which she had afterward all the
year to recover. The frights which the child caused her by her daring
in climbing, in jumping, in riding, all the passionate transports of
her wild nature made this visit for her at once delicious and terrible;
delicious for she adored Felicia, the one family tie that remained to
this poor old salamander in retirement after thirty years of fluttering
in the glare of the footlights; terrible, for the demon used to upset
without pity the dancer's house, decorated, carefully ordered, perfumed,
like her dressing-room at the opera, and adorned with a museum of
souvenirs dated from every stage in the world.

Constance Crenmitz was the one feminine element in Felicia's childhood.
Futile, limited in mind, she had at least a coquettish taste, agile
fingers that knew how to sew, to embroider, to arrange things, to leave
in every corner of the room their dainty and individual trace. She
alone undertook to train up the wild young plant, and to awaken with
discretion the woman in this strange being on whom cloaks, furs,
everything elegant devised by fashion, seemed to take odd folds or look
curiously awkward.

It was the dancer again--in what neglect must she not have lived, this
little Ruys--who, triumphing over the paternal selfishness, insisted
upon a necessary separation, when Felicia was twelve or thirteen years
old; and she took also the responsibility of finding a suitable school,
a school which she selected of deliberate purpose, very comfortable and
very respectable, right at the upper end of an airy road, occupying a
roomy, old-world building surrounded by high walls, big trees, a sort of
convent without its constraint and contempt of serious studies.

Much work, on the contrary, was done in Mme. Belin's institution,
where the pupils went out only on the principal holidays and had no
communication with outside except the visits of relatives on Thursdays,
in a little garden planted with flowering shrubs or in the immense
parlour with carved and gilded work ov