“Her father was her cult, Canon.... In that she resembled much the irresistible Venetian—Catarina Dolfin-Tron.

“Sally seldom wrote.”

“Her time, you should remember, was hardly her own.”

“Tell me something,” he insisted, “of her broken brilliance.”

“Only by keening her could I hope to do that.”

“One would need to be a Bion. Or a Moschus....”

“We laid her star-like, in the dress-circle—out on Juliet’s bier ... Mr. and Mrs. Smee and her dresser watched ... Berinthia ... Sylvester ... came. I cannot loose from mind one of the scene-shifters said to me, ‘How bonny she looked on the bloody balcony.’”

“My poor darling.”

“On the evening of her dissolution, I regret to say there was a most unseemly fracas in the foyer—some crazy wretch demanding back her money, having booked her place in advance; every one of the staff in tears and too unstrung to heed her. Had it been a box, Canon; or even a stall! But she only paid four shillings.”

“Was there anything on my poor child’s mind distressing her at all?”