There are different sets, of course--fashionable, political, artistic--but the people in them are all crossing over, all advancing and retiring, with the same apparent aimlessness, or setting to partners." "There is occasionally an aim in that." Charles smiled grimly.
"They follow the music in that as in everything else.

You go away for ten years, and still find them, on your return, going through the same figures to new tunes.

I wonder if there are any people anywhere in the world who stand on their own feet, and think and act for themselves; who don't set their watches by other people's; who don't live and marry and die by rote, expecting to go straight up to heaven by rote afterwards ?" "I believe there are such people," said Ruth, earnestly; "I have had glimpses of them, but the real ones look like the shadows, and the shadows like the real ones, and--we miss them in the crowd." "Or one thinks one finds them, and they turn out only clever imitations after all.

In these days there is a mania for shamming originality of some kind.

I am always imagining people I meet are real, and not shadows, until one day I unintentionally put my hand through them, and find out my mistake.