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. Such skill as I had been master of had perished out of me. If I had gone upon the stage, I could not have said a word nor moved a limb. The old pursuit, the old pleasure, familiar and dear to me from my childhood, was all withered up for ever.

Men have played—and women too, I know—a thousand times with hearts broken and bleeding, and the world has applauded them. But with me any talent I had ever possessed was gone for ever: to have passed within a playhouse would have made me mad, I think. That last night I had been so happy—that last night, in the fulness of my joy, I had blessed God!

I lived—no matter how. The life of a very wretched creature, but still not the life of a beggar. The manner of my existence from my birth up had taught me to live almost upon nothing, and had taught me also many ways of providing for myself such scanty daily bread as I was forced to eat.

All the winter long I sought for tidings of her—and him. But the land was wide, and months had gone by, and I had no knowledge of where he dwelt, and I gleaned nothing that was of any service to me.

When I reached Paris I abode there for a while.