Read it through once

“Ah,” Madame Merle exclaimed, “that I’ve never seen! But my dreams were so great--so preposterous. Heaven forgive me, I’m dreaming now!” And she turned back to the piano and began grandly to play. On the morrow she said to Isabel that her definition of success had been very pretty, yet frightfully sad. Measured in that way, who had ever succeeded? The dreams of one’s youth, why they were enchanting, they were divine! Who had ever seen such things come to pass?