rlatan skirts, black
stockings clocked with pink, and black jerseys with a large pink A
worked on the front. There were about twenty girls in Jenny's class, who
all had lockers and pegs of their own in the anteroom curtained off by
black velvet draperies. Fat theatrical managers with diamond rings and
buttonholes sometimes used to sit beside Madame and watch the pupils.
She sat on the dais, whence her glittering black eyes and keen face
could follow the dancers everywhere. Jenny used to think the mistress
was like a black note of the piano come to life. There was something so
clean and polished and clear-cut about Madame. Her eyes, she used to
think, were like black currants. Madame's feet in black satin shoes were
restless all the while beneath her petticoats; but she never let them
appear, so that the children should have no assistance beyond the long
pole with which she used to mark the beat on the floor and sometimes on
the shoulders of a refractory dancer.

Two years rolled by, and Jenny was able to go alone now. She was
considered one of Madame Aldavini's best pupils, and several managers
wanted her for fairy parts, but Mrs. Raeburn always refused, and Madame
Aldavini, because she thought that Jenny might be spoilt by too
premature a first appearance, did not try persuasion.

As might have been expected, the instant that Jenny had her own way and
was fairly set on the road to the gratification of her wishes, she
began to be lazy. She was so far a natural dancer that nearly every step
came very easily to her. This facility was fatal, for unless she learned
at once, she would not take the trouble to learn at all. Madame used to
write home to Hagworth Street complaints of her indolence, and Mrs.
Raeburn used to threaten to take her away from the school. Then for a
very short time Jenny would work really hard.

At thirteen she went every day to the dancing school, and at thirteen
Jenny had deliciously slim legs and a figure as lithe as a hazel wand.
Her almond eyes were of some fantastic shade of sapphire-blue with deep
gray twilights in them and sea-green laughters. They were extraordinary
eyes whose under-lids always closed first. Her curls never won back the
silver they lost in the country; but her complexion had the bloom and
delicate texture of a La France rose, although in summer her straight
little nose was freckled like a bird's egg. Her hands were long and
white; her lips very crimson and translucent, but t