hough marred by a slight huskiness due to
public speaking, was full of quality and resonance. She was one of those
women who, carrying in their presence a fine tranquillity at once kindly
and ascetic, imbue the onlooker with their long and perceptive
experience of humanity. She was in no sense homely or motherly; indeed,
she wore about her the remoteness of the great. Yet whatever in her
general appearance seemed of marble was vivified by clear hazel eyes
into the reality of womanhood.

"And so you're going to join our club?" inquired Miss Bailey.

Jenny, although she had intended this first visit to be merely
empirical, felt bound to commit herself to the affirmative.

"You'll soon know all about our objects."

"Oh, I've told her a lot already, Miss Bailey," declared Lilli with the
eagerness of the trusted school-girl.

"That's right," said Miss Bailey, smiling. "Come along then, and I will
enroll you, Miss----"

"Pearl," murmured Jenny, feeling as if her name had somehow slipped down
and escaped sideways through her neck. Then with an effort clearing her
throat, she added, "Jenny Pearl," blushing furiously at the confession
of identity.

"Your address?"

"Better say 17 Hagworth Street, Islington. Only I'm not living there
just now. Now I'm living 43 Stacpole Terrace, Camden Town."

"Have you a profession?"

"I'm on the stage."

"What a splendid profession, too--for a woman. Don't you think so?"

Jenny stared at this commendation of a state of life she had always
imagined was distasteful to people like Miss Bailey.

"I don't know much about splendid, but I suppose it's all right," she
agreed at last.

"Indeed it is. Are you at the Orient also?"

"Yes, you know, in the ballet," said Jenny very quickly, so that the
president might not think she was trying to push herself unduly.

"I don't believe there's anything that gives more pleasure than good
dancing. Dancing ought to be the expression of life's joy," said the
older woman, gazing at the pigeon-holes full of docketed files, at the
bookshelves stuffed with dry volumes of Ethics and Politics and
Economics, as if half regretting she, too, was not in the Orient Ballet.
"Dancing is the oldest art," she continued. "I like to think they danced
the spring in long before calendars were made. Your subscription is half
a crown a year."

Jenny produced the coin from her bag; and it said much for Miss Bailey's
personality that the new member to adorn the act