ies
and claret-cup, and Jenny went with Valerie to buy the widest pink sash
that ever was known, and tied it in the largest pink bow that ever was
seen. She danced every single dance and even waltzed twice with the
great comedian, Jimmy James, and, what is more, told him he couldn't
dance, to his great delight, which seems to show that Mr. James had a
sense of humor in addition to being a great comedian.

It really was a splendid evening, and perhaps the most splendid part of
it was lying in bed with Valerie and talking over with her all the
partners and taking them off with such excited demonstration of their
methods that the bed became all untucked and had to be made over again
before they could finally settle themselves down to sleep.

In February Jenny was back again in Hagworth Street, with memories of
"Jack and the Beanstalk" fading slowly like the colors of a sunset. She
had enjoyed her personal success in Glasgow, but already success was
beginning to prove itself an empty prize--a rainbow bubble easily burst.
The reason is obvious. Jenny had never been taught to concentrate her
mind. She had no power of retrospective analysis. The applause endured a
little while in her meditations, but gradually died away in the
occupations of the present. She could not secure it as the basis of a
wider success on the next occasion. She began to ask: "What's the good
of anything?" Within a few weeks of the resumption of ordinary life, the
Glasgow theater had become like a piece of cake that one eats
unconsciously, then turns to find and discovers not. She was no farther
forward on the road to independence. She became oppressed by the dead
weight of futurity.

At home, too, there was a very real repression, which she grew to hate
more and more deeply on each occasion of its exercise. A breath of
maternal interference and she would fly into a temper--a scowling,
chair-tilting, door-slamming rage. She would fling herself out of the
house with threats never to return. One day when she was reproached with
staying out longer than she was allowed, she rushed out again and
disappeared. Her mother, in despair, went off to invoke the aid of
Madame Aldavini, who wisely guessed that Jenny would be found with
Valerie Duval. There she was, indeed, in Valerie's rooms in Soho, not at
all penitent for her misbehavior, but sufficiently frightened by
Madame's threat of expulsion to come back home without argument.

Freedom was still Jenny's re