ne Dale, I think
I'm funny. I do really. Sometimes I can dance all over the place and
kick up a shocking row, laughing and that. And then I cry. Now what
about? I ask you. What have I got to cry about? Nothing. I just sit and
cry my eyes out over nothing."

Jenny was beginning to take an interest in herself. Introspection was
dawning on her mind. She did not practice the meditation of age,
infirmity and death; when these spectres confronted her, she dismissed
them as too impalpable to count. Nor did she examine her conscience
arduously like a Catholic neophyte. Unreasonable fits of weeping and
long headaches were, nevertheless, very disconcerting; and she was bound
to search her mind for the cause.

The first explanation that presented itself was age; but she was
unwilling to admit the probability of growing old at twenty, and turned
to health for the reason. She could not honestly assert that she was
ill. Then she asked herself if disappointment was the cause, and
wondered whether, if she were suddenly invited to head the Orient
playbill, she would be exhilarated out of tears forever. Finally she
decided, breathless in the solitude of a warm May dusk, that she wanted
to fall in love. Desire, winged with the scent of lilac blossom, stole
in through the sapphire window. Desire flooded her soul with ineffable
aspirations. Desire wounded her heart as she whispered, timidly,
faintly, "darling, my darling." From that moment she began to seek the
unknown lover in the casual acquaintance. She began to imagine the
electric light shining in the blue eyes of some newly-met fellow was not
electric light at all. She would meet him on the next day, and,
beholding him starkly dull, would declare again that men were "awful."
The readiness with which they all capitulated puzzled her. Why was she
attractive? Irene told her she made eyes; but this was false, or, if she
did make eyes, they were made unconsciously. Men told her she led them
on. There must be some lure in her personality fatal long before she
attempted to exercise it; for, though latterly she had been deliberately
charming to most men at first, she was so very ungracious the following
day that anybody else but a man would have left her alone. The poor
fools, however, seemed actually to rejoice in her hardness of heart.
Moreover, why had this fascination never helped her to renown? She could
dance better than many of the girls who were given _pas seuls_; but she
had never