She thought in gestures. She had in her the inborn love of grace and physical force. With graceful movement she summed up a thousand things which she could not have said; and she had the idea of reviving the acrobatics of the ancients, just as others have reconstructed the songs of old times, and the dance through the ages. One day at the Louvre she had seen on a Greek vase an artistic dance which struck her. She had spoken of it to Phil while posing for Morgana—for Helia saw Phil often.
In spite of all, she loved to be near him, and though Phil might forget, on her side she felt her love for him only increase. She was one of those proud hearts which love but once. In spite of all, she believed in the sacredness of a sworn promise. Phil would come back to her! Besides, Phil was a precious help in the work she was undertaking. Together they consulted the “Recherches Historiques et Critiques sur les Mimes et Pantomimes du Seigneur de Rivery.” Her head was full of neurobatie, scheunobatie, and acrobatie. She dreamed of gymnastics and the dance. She studied her movements in Phil’s studio, in the evening, after his work.
He had a jointed lay-figure which she put in the proper poses, seeking for effects in its curving and bending back. She cut out little costumes and tried them on it. She went to the Library, and looked through the boxes of the booksellers along the Quais. The instinct of the beautiful guided her. She composed her number as she might compose a poem.
The reverse of a Roman medal and an old engraving representing the Genoese who descended the towers of Notre Dame, torch in hand, to offer a crown to Queen Isabeau suggested ideas to her. A biography of Madame Saqui, who was called the first acrobat of the empire, and whom Napoleon entitled mon enragée, was very useful to her.
“Plato,” Phil said to her one day when they were studying together, “Plato contends that gymnastics give grace to the movements of the body, of which we ought to think even before adorning the mind.”
“Plato is wrong,” was Helia’s answer.
But she proved that he was right by the moral energy which physical training had developed in her. For months she studied without let-up, mastering rebellious muscles, beginning again, twenty times over, the same thing, setting to work with all her heart and all her courage, with clenched teeth and eyes shining with the pride of will. There was despair in her mad energy.
“But you will kill yourself, Helia,” Phil said to her.
“Nonsense!” said Helia. “I will die or do it!”
“In other days,” she thought in her simplicity, “Phil did not like to hear me speaking of my trade; but who knows?—he may change if I become a grande artiste.”