designed not to display individual
figures, but to achieve broad effects of color and ingenuity.

Straight lines were esteemed above dancing, straight lines of Frenchmen
or Spaniards in the Procession of Nations, straight lines of Lowestoft
or Dresden in the Procession of Porcelain, straight lines of
Tortoise-shell Butterflies or Crimson-underwing Moths in the Procession
of Insects. Jenny's gay deep eyes were obscured by tricolor flags or the
spout of a teapot or the disproportionate antennae of a butterfly. There
was no individual grace of movement in swinging down the stage in the
middle of a long line of undistinguished girls. If the audience
applauded, they applauded a shaft of vivid color, no more
enthusiastically than they would have clapped an elaborate arrangement
of limelight. Everything was sacrificed to the cleverness of a merely
inventive mind. More than ever Jenny felt the waste of academic
instruction in her art. She had been learning to dance for so many
years, and there she was beside girls who could neither dance nor move,
girls who had large features and showy legs and so much cubic space for
spangles.

But if her personality did not carry over the footlights and reach the
mighty audience of Drury Lane, behind the scenes it gradually detached
itself from the huge crowd of girls. Great comedians with great salaries
condescended to find out her name. Great principal boys with great
expanses of chest nodded at her over furs. Dainty principal girls with
dainty tiers of petticoats smiled and said good evening in their
mincing, genteel, principal girl voices. Even the stage doorkeeper never
asked her name more than once. Everybody knew Jenny Pearl, except the
public. So many people told her she was sure to get on that she began to
be ambitious again, and used to go, without being pressed, to Madame
Aldavini's for practice. The latter was delighted and prophesied a
career--a career that should date from her engagement (a real engagement
this time) at Covent Garden in the spring.

Jenny's popularity at the theater made her more impatient than ever of
home. She bore less and less easily her mother's attempts to steer her
course.

"You'll come to grief," Mrs. Raeburn warned her.

"I don't think so."

"A nice mess Edie made of things."

"I'm not Edie. I'm not so soft."

"Why you can't meet some nice young chap, and settle down comfortable
with a home of your own, I can't think."

"Like Edie, I suppos