"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; even the opal brooch was worn every day because it happened to be useful. Once a letter from Maurice fell from her bag into the lake, and she cared no more for it than the swan's feather beside which it floated. July came in hot and metallic. Every sunset was a foundry, and the nights were like smoke. One day towards the end of the month Jenny, walking down Cranbourn Street, thought she would pay a visit to Lilli Vergoe. The room had not changed much since the day Jenny joined the ballet. Lilli, in a soiled muslin dress, was smoking the same brand of cigarettes in the same wicker-chair. The same photographs clung to the mirror, or were stacked on the mantelshelf in palisades. The walls were covered with Mr. Vergoe's relics. "Hullo, Jenny! So you've found your way here at last. What's been wrong with you lately? You're looking thin." "It's this shocking hot weather." "Why, when you came here before and I said it was hot, you said it was lovely." "Did I?" asked Jenny indifferently. "How's your mother? And dad? And young May?"