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 the first time she had actually asked him to the house.

When he arrived, clasping a bouquet he had bought overnight and nursed in his bedroom water-jug, he found that she had begged the loan of the ground-floor sitting-room, which was unlet, from her landlady, and was awaiting him there, wearing her grey dress and a rose pinned by the little white muslin collar that spanned the base of her throat.  She was not looking her best, but somehow that made her all the more appealing to Ishmael; the sudden heat had made dark shadows under her eyes, and her movements were more languid even than usual.