She seemed puzzled for a moment when
she found that the implements did not answer, and then she laughed!
Such a fresh, girlish laugh! It did one's heart good to hear her! Yes,
verily! Ideala was herself again, absent-mindedness and all.
And before dinner was over a wonderful thing had happened. For whereas
we had hitherto been the most commonplace and prosaic party imaginable,
getting along smoothly, taking no particular interest in each other, or
in anything else, and only remarkable for a degree of dulness which
would have astonished us by its bulk could it have been weighed and
measured--to-night, for no apparent reason, we suddenly woke up and
astounded ourselves by more originality than we had been accustomed to
believe was left in the world altogether--while something put into our
conversation just the right amount of polite friction to act as a
counter-irritant, so that, when we left the table, each felt that he
had been at his best--had been brilliant, in fact, and shone with
lustre enough to make any man happy.
Once in a London theatre I saw an actress walk across the stage.
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