Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Part one - VIII
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savage beast. The consuming rage which filled her when they
tormented her was always hidden behind a scornful, indifferent
smile. Once she had nearly cried her eyes out with rage and
misery, and when on one or two occasions she had lost control
of herself, she had seen their triumph. Only by putting on
an air of placid, irritating indifference could she hold her own
against them.
In the upper form she made friends with one or two girls;
she was then at an age when no child can bear to be unlike
others, and she tried to copy them. These friendships, however,
did not give her much joy. She remembered how they made
fun of her when they discovered that she played with dolls.
She disowned her beloved children and said they belonged to
her little sisters.
There was a time when she wanted to go on the stage. She
and her friends were stage-struck; they sold their school books
and their confirmation brooches to buy tickets, and night after
night they went to the gallery of the theatre. One day she told
her friends how she would act a certain part that interested
them. They burst out laughing; they had always known she
was conceited, but not that she was a megalomaniac. Did she
really believe that she could become an artist, she, who could
not even dance? It would be a pretty sight indeed to see her
walk up and down the stage with that tall, stiff skeleton of
hers.
No, she could not dance. When she was quite a child her
mother used to play to her, and she twisted and turned, tripped
and curtseyed as she liked, and her mother called her a little
linnet. She thought of her first party, how she had arrived full
of anticipation, happy in a new white dress which her mother
had made after an old English picture. She remembered how
she stiffened all over when she began to dance. That stiffness
never quite left her; when she tried to learn dancing by herself
her soft, slim body became stiff as a poker. She was no good
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