“I read a romance in Mrs. Bath’s library once,”  Margaret said.  “The heroine was going to a dance alone.  I read quite a few romances when I was a girl.  I noticed that heroines liked to be alone, or at least knew how, but that life didn’t leave them alone.  Anyway, in this one romance, she was going to the dance alone.  She wasn’t downhearted about it at all.  Because she had a silk dress on. She liked how it felt against her skin.  She thought that wearing a silk dress, you didn’t need a dance partner.  It was already like dancing with someone, silk pressed against you, the two of you moving through the air.”

–Howard Norman,  The Bird Artist