Odette was a very good teacher but not the finest; Mérante could say that, to himself at least, because he saw all of his former prima ballerina's foibles and idiosyncrasies in Félicie's dancing. The way she held her wrists, pointed her right toe, let her neck bend into the curve of her arm like a dove with its wing were all Odette's. When he trained dancers, it was much harder to see his imprimatur, he knew that—he was able to perceive each one as entirely separate and was able to identify each one's tendencies and flaws and to correct them so that only the woman remained. Still, Odette had been an exceptional performer, with a rare ability to channel her passionate nature into the most restrained, exquisite choreography, and her commitment to precision and an ephemeral stillness were most evident in the young auburn-haired girl.
He and Odette had hardly spoken in years before Félicie arrived, smudged and far too thin in her cast-offs, because Odette could not bear it. She had not let him help her, beyond the barest measures, and he knew he must conceal how it hurt him to see her working as a drudge in the Opéra House she had once reigned in as its queen. His queen. Her face was too drawn and her eyes, those blue eyes that were the color of dusk in Paris, were too large in her pale face but she took pride for sustenance in place of food or drink and always had. She could not believe she had any value to him if she could not dance and she could not dance if she could not do it perfectly. She did not know who she was and so she couldn't believe he could, did and still loved the woman he knew. He had done what he could for her after the fall that crippled her. He knew she would not believe any further declaration of love, not even if it was her favorite Verlaine whose words he borrowed.
Félicie had learned lessons Odette had not meant to teach, the most important one—to return. Mérante saw what it was for the others in the class when the young Bretonne arrived every morning, her face scrubbed and her narrow shoulders bare, her vitality contagious. She was the flame that lit the candle. She made him remember how it had first been to come to Paris, to choose the corps and the prima, to quarrel with the conductor and see every face in the audience gilded before the curtain parted. She had made Odette become another woman, not the one she had been before her injury or the one who had been suffering since; she let Odette remember how much she had loved to dance and mourn it, she had let her admit how her leg ached and how much better she liked to cook for two. Félicie had done something else, something that was without words, that let Odette again hold his gaze steadily when he spoke and let her drop her eyes, those smoky blue eyes like a Parisian twilight, when he brushed his lips against her brow. He had found the room in the garret for them but he knew when he told Odette what he wanted now, to give her what she needed, she would nod and she would not turn away when he bent over to kiss her sweet red mouth. She would let him put his arms around her and hold her close enough she did not need her stick. She would even brush back the lock of hair that fell across his forehead and murmur Je me souviens before she pressed her lips to his jaw, before she whispered his name with her hand against his hear