Page:The Inner House.djvu/74

70 than the self-taught Christine, but not (as they have said since) with greater sweetness.

Then Jack took Christine and gave her a first lesson. It lasted nearly half an hour.

"Oh," cried the girl, when Lady Mildred stopped, "I feel as if I had been floating round in a dream. Was I a stupid pupil. Jack?"

"You were the aptest pupil that dancing-master ever had."

"I know now," she said, with panting breath and flushed cheeks, "what dancing means. It is wonderful that the feet should answer to the music. Surely you must have loved dancing?"

"We did," the girls replied; "we did. There was no greater pleasure in the world."

"Why did you give it up?"

They looked at each other.

"After the Great Discovery," said Dorothy Oliphant, "we were so happy to get rid of the terrors of old age, and the loss of our beauty, and everything, that at first we thought of nothing else. When we tried to dance again, something had gone out of it. The men were not the same. Perhaps we were not the same. Everything languished after that. There was no longer any enjoyment. We ceased to dance because we found no pleasure in dancing."

"But now you do?" said Christine.

"To-night we do, because you have filled our hearts with the old thoughts. To get out of the dull, dull round—why is it that we never felt it dull till to-night? Oh, so long as we can remember the old thoughts, let us continue to dance and to play and to sing. If the old thoughts cease to come back to us"—she looked at Geoffrey—"let us fall back into our dulness, like the men and women round us."