wrecked
the Hyde Park railings in their anger that the hastily constructed
Ministry of Derby should still let Reform hang in air. Yet all these
affairs of the nation only affected Ishmael from the outside, for he was
beginning to be at his most personal.

Turns of singing and dancing interested him less than plays where there
was a definite and necessarily keenly personal story. The characters
were all occupied with their feelings for each other, never with
theories or conditions. There was one exception to this rule, though
Ishmael kept that to himself--he went often to see a little dancer whose
turn only lasted ten minutes, while the particular moment of it for
which he went was over in a flash, the moment when, whirling round and
round very quickly, her short filmy skirts stood out and were nothing
but a misty circlet about her, so that she gave the illusion of having
nothing to break the slim straight lines of her. She seemed nude with an
elfin nudity that charmed him while it did not inflame, or if it did,
only with the subtle inflammation of the mind, which can withstand such
onslaughts for many years before a sudden reaction of the body shows the
connection between the two. Ishmael, who took no interest in damsels in
tights or in the exuberant proportions of the "frail" ladies that amused
Killigrew, found himself waiting for that moment every evening, and his
satisfaction when he caught it was rather that of a person who is
pleased at verifying something he has had the acumen to discover than
any more poignant emotion. He went far oftener to see this than he did
to watch Blanche in her small part as one of the innocuous and well-bred
company performing at the little old Strand Theatre, which was then
still a phalanx of the respectable Swanborough family.

Blanche kept her work as a thing apart from her life--that is to say,
she did not join the rest of the company at supper at the pothouse
opposite, nor acknowledge the attentions of the mashers from the front
row who waited at the shabby little stage door of a night. She was very
charming to the other members of the company, especially the women, and
the fact that she had enemies there was easily explained on the ground
of her aloofness. She told Ishmael very little with all her frankness of
address, but one night as he was seeing her home she asked him to come
and have tea with her next day, which happened to be a Sunday, and
Ishmael accepted eagerly; it was th