est meeting outside the domain of the Women's Political,
Social and Economic League, and their auspices were now unimaginable. In
order to avoid the whole subject, Jenny began to avoid Lilli Vergoe; and
very soon, partly owing to the opportunities of propinquity, partly
owing to a renewed desire for it, her friendship with Irene Dale was
reconstituted on a firmer basis than before.

Six months had now elapsed since that desolate first of May. The ballet
of Cupid was taken off about the same time, and the occupation of
rehearsing for a new one had steered Jenny through the weeks immediately
following Maurice's defection. She was now dancing in a third ballet in
which she took so little interest that no account of it is necessary.
The pangs of outraged love were drugged to painlessness by time. From a
superficial standpoint the wounds were healed, that is, if a dull
insensibility to the original cause of the evil be a cure. Jenny no
longer missed Maurice on particular occasions, and, having grown used to
his absence, was not aware she missed him in a wider sense. Love so
impassioned as theirs, love lived through in moments of individual
ecstasy, was in the verdict of average comment a disease; but average
comment failed to realize that, like the scarlet fever of her youth, its
malignant influence would be extended in complications of abnormal
emotional states. Average comment did not perceive that the worst
tragedies of unhappy love are not those which end with death or
separation. Nor did Jenny herself foresee the train of ills that in the
wake of such a shock to her feelings would be liable to twist her whole
life awry.

With Maurice she had embarked on the restless ocean of an existence
lived at unusually high pressure. She had conjured for her soul dreams
of adventure, fiery-hearted dreams which would not be satisfied by the
awakening of common-place dawns. Time had certainly assuaged with his
heavy anodyne the intimate desire for her lover; but time would rather
aggravate than heal the universal need of her womanhood. These six
months of seared emotions and withered hopes were a trance from which
she would awake on the very flashing heels of the last mental and
physical excitement.

It was said in the last chapter that a less sincere heart would have
been caught on the rebound. Those hearts are dragged but a little way
down into the depths of misery; for such have not fallen from great
heights. Jenny on the first