xford Street or gossip by
the open windows of her club. In the dressing-room she would sit silent,
impatient of intrusion upon the waste with which she had surrounded
herself. The ballets used to drag intolerably. She found no refuge from
her heart in dancing, no consolation in the music and color. She danced
listlessly, glad when the task was over, glad when she came out of the
theater, and equally glad to leave Stacpole Terrace on the next day. In
bed she would lie awake meditating upon nothing; and when she slept, her
sleep was parched.

"Buck up, old girl, whatever's the matter?" Irene would ask, and Jenny,
resentful, would scowl at the _gaucherie_. She longed to be with her
mother again, and would visit Hagworth Street more often, hoping some
word would be uttered that would make it easy for her to subdue that
pride which, however deeply wounded by Maurice, still battled
invincibly, frightening every other instinct and emotion. But when the
words of welcome came, Jenny, shy of softness, would carry off existence
with an air, tears and reconciliation set aside. It was not long before
the rumor of her love's disaster was carried in whispers round the many
dressing-rooms of the Orient. Soon enough Jenny found the girls staring
at her when they thought her attention was occupied. She had always
seemed to them so invulnerable that her jilting excited a more than
usually diffused curiosity; but for a long time, though many rejoiced,
no girl was brave enough to ask malicious questions, intruding upon her
solitude.

June came in with the best that June can give of cloudless weather,
weather that is born in skies of peach-blossom, whose richness is never
lost in wine-dark nights pressed from the day's sweetness. What weather
it would have been for the country! Jenny used to sit for hours together
in St. James's Park, scratching aimlessly upon the gravel with the
ferule of her parasol. Men would stop and sit beside her, looking round
the corners of their eyes like actors taking a call. But she was
scarcely aware of their presence, and, when they spoke, would look up
vaguely perplexed so that they muttered apologies and moved along. Her
thoughts were always traveling through the desert of her soul. Unblessed
by mirage, they traveled steadily through a monotone towards an horizon
of brass. Her heart beat dryly and regularly like the tick of a clock,
and her memory merely recorded time. No relic of the past could bring a
tear