rmance; but the spectacle, somehow, is not often beautiful, and
strikes no note of pleasure. If I had seen no more, therefore, this
evening might have remained in my memory as a rare experience. But the
best part of it was yet to come. For after the others had desisted, the
musician still continued to play, and a little button between two and
three years old came out into the cleared space and began to figure
before us as the music prompted. I had an opportunity of seeing her, not
on this night only, but on many subsequent nights; and the wonder and
comical admiration she inspired was only deepened as time went on. She
had an admirable musical ear; and each new melody, as it struck in her a
new humour, suggested wonderful combinations and variations of movement.
Now it would be a dance with which she would suit the music, now rather
an appropriate pantomime, and now a mere string of disconnected
attitudes. But whatever she did, she did it with the same verve and
gusto. The spirit of the air seemed to have entered into her, and to
possess her like a passion; and you could see her struggling to find
expression for the beauty that was in her against the inefficacy of the
dull, half-informed body. Though her footing was uneven, and her
gestures often ludicrously helpless, still the spectacle was not merely
amusing; and though subtle inspirations of movement miscarried in
tottering travesty, you could still see that they had been inspirations;
you could still see that she had set her heart on realising something
just and beautiful, and that, by the discipline of these abortive
efforts, she was making for herself in the future a quick, supple, and
obedient body. It was grace in the making. She was not to be daunted by
any merriment of people looking on critically; the music said something
to her, and her whole spirit was intent on what the music said: she must
carry out its suggestions, she must do her best to translate its
language into that other dialect of the modulated body into which it can
be translated most easily and fully.

Just the other day I was witness to a second scene, in which the motive
was something similar; only this time with quite common children, and in
the familiar neighbourhood of Hampstead. A little congregation had
formed itself in the lane underneath my window, and was busy over a
skipping-rope. There were two sisters, from seven to nine perhaps, with
dark faces and dark hair, and slim, lithe, little