erely an elaboration
of the commonplace self-consciousness incident to so small an action as
entering alone a crowded room. Years ago, as a little girl, she had once
woken up with an idea she no longer existed, an idea dispelled by the
sight of her clothes lying as usual across the chair. Now she was
frightened by the overwhelming realization of herself: she existed too
actually. This analysis of her mental attitude shows that Jenny did not
possess the comfortable mind which owes volition to external forces. Her
brain registered sensations too finely; her sense of contact was too
fastidious. Acquiescence was never possible without the agony of
experience. Her ambition to dance was in childhood a force which was
killed by unimaginative treatment. Once killed, nothing could revive it.
So it would be with her love. In the first place, she was aware of the
importance of surrender to a man. She did not regard the step as an
incident of opportunity. All her impulses urged her to give way. Every
passionate fire and fever of love was burning her soul with reckless
intentions. On the other hand, she felt that if she yielded herself and
tasted the bitterness of disillusionment, she would be forevermore
liable to acquiesce. She would demand of her lover attributes which he
might not possess, and out of his failure by the completeness of her
personality she would create for herself a tragedy.

Finally a third aspect presented itself in the finality of the proposed
surrender. She was now for the first time enjoying life with a fullness
of appreciation which formerly she had never imagined. She was happy in
a sense of joy. When Cunningham was playing in the studio, she had felt
how insecure such happiness was, how impatient of any design to imprison
it in the walls of time. Indeed, perhaps she had seen it escaping on the
echoes of a melody. Then suddenly over all this confusion of prudence,
debate, hesitation, breathless abandonment and scorching blushes, sleep
resumed its sway, subduing the unnatural activity of a normally indolent
mind.

She lay there asleep in the darkness without a star to aid or cross her
destiny. She and her brooch of opals were swept out into the surge of
evolution; and she must be dependent on a fallible man to achieve her
place in the infallible scheme of the universe.

Chapter XX: _Fete Galante_

For some weeks after the incident of the opal, there was no development
of the problem of behavior.