I hold a handful of glass beads in my hand-- silver, azure, pale green-grey-- gleams of metal under the warm kitchen light. For a strangely evocative moment, I can see into them-- lay them in a woman's necklace, nestled close to the collarbone. She raises a knobby finger to a mirror, her dark eyes alight with some faithless passion. Before her lie sheets of paper, written over with lines of cramped, lacy writing, stories curled up on pages. Her light hair, the colour of grain golden in the early autumn, shines darkly in the shadows. Grey has begun to lay its feathery touch near her temples, and she is quieter-- slower. The swift, laughing changes of dreams are smaller pleasures now. . . she saves the memory of days in the cafe . . the few glasses of champagne, the kisses in the rain, standing alone at a corner shop. . .

"What are you doing?"

I drop the beads back into the bowl, startled into my past.

"Nothing."

An empty hall. Battered wooden floors beneath her feet, worn red velvet framing the picture. Wearing a shift of green silk shot with silver, her feet are bare and supple, delicately arching to rise and fall. She lifts her pale face to the watery spotlight. The rouged cheeks and crimson lips form strangely violent explosions of colour, scarlet like great tafetta blooms of flowers. The music begins softly, the low throb of power tugging at her still body. Her head is bowed, weighed down by the knot of heavy hair resting on her nape. The violins shift into being, and she raises a hand languidly-- flowing gracefully, it is hardly believable that she steps like any other being-- but she does, and the dance begins, a slow, trailing series of turns and reaches. She must know that the curtain falls soon, but shows no sign of it. This is for herself alone, and the seconds breathe in an eternal fashion. Romance, she feels, in the endless glamour of the leap, transcending the slippery duet and moving in this chilly sphere. Does she know, that two years later, she will rest her head on folded fingers, staring silently at a picture before her, thinking-- I remember dancing?

 "I understand you.--You do not suppose that I have ever felt much.--For four months, Marianne, I have had all this hanging on my mind, without being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature; knowing that it would make you and my mother most unhappy whenever it were explained to you, yet unable to prepare you for it in the least.-- It was told me,--it was in a manner forced on me by the very person herself, whose prior engagement ruined all my prospects; and told me, as I thought, with triumph.-- This person's suspicions, therefore, I have had to oppose, by endeavouring to appear indifferent where I have been most deeply interested;--and it has not been only once;--I have had her hopes and exultation to listen to again and again.-- I have known myself to be divided from Edward for ever, without hearing one circumstance that could make me less desire the connection.--Nothing has proved him unworthy; nor has anything declared him indifferent to me.-- I have had to contend against the unkindness of his sister, and the insolence of his mother; and have suffered the punishment of an attachment, without enjoying its advantages.-- And all this has been going on at a time, when, as you know too well, it has not been my only unhappiness.-- If you can think me capable of ever feeling--surely you may suppose that I have suffered now. The composure of mind with which I have brought myself at present to consider the matter, the consolation that I have been willing to admit, have been the effect of constant and painful exertion;--they did not spring up of themselves;-- they did not occur to relieve my spirits at first.-- No, Marianne.--then, if I had not been bound to silence, perhaps nothing could have kept me entirely--not even what I owed to my dearest friends--from openly shewing that I was very unhappy."--

Ever just one of those nights when all you want to do is live? Wear fishnet stockings and a black dress that glitters in all the right places? Turn your hair beautifully marcelled, slide on satin gloves, and wear dark red lipstick? Don't you ever feel like you'd give all to slink around in diamonds with your fingers curled around an ivory and gold cigarette holder? Don't you wonder what champagne tastes like in the company of a smoky room?

I do. And I think I'm entirely too wholesome for my own good.