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 of May fell straight and deep as a plummet to the bed of the ocean of despair, there to lie long submerged. But to one who had rejected death, life would not hold out oblivion. Life with all its cold insistence called her once more to the surface; thence to make for whatever beach chance should offer. Jenny, scarcely conscious of any responsibleness for her first struggles, clutched at suffragism--a support for which life never intended her. However, it served to help her ashore; and now, with some of the cynicism that creeps into the adventurer's life, she looked around for new adventures. Her desire to revenge herself on men was superseded by anxiety to rediscover the savor of living. Her instinct was now less to hurt others than to indulge herself. A year's abstention from the episodic existence spent by Irene and her before Maurice had created an illusion of permanence, had given that earlier time a romantic charm; and a revival of it seemed fraught with many possibilities of a more widely extended wonder. One evening late in October she asked Irene casually, as if there had been no interval of desuetude, whether she were coming out. To this inquiry her friend, without any manifestation of surprise, answered in the affirmative. It was characteristic of both girls, this manner of resuming a friendship. Now began a period not worth a detailed chronicle, since it was merely a repetition of a period already discussed--a repetition, moreover, that like most anachronisms seemed after other events jejune and somewhat tawdry. The young men were just as young as those of earlier years; but Irene and Jenny were older and, if before they had found it hard to tolerate these ephemeral encounters, they found it harder still now. The result of this was that, where once a single whisky and soda was enough, now three or four scarcely availed to pass away the time. Neither of the girls drank too much in more than a general sense, but it was an omen of flying youth when whiskies were invoked to give an edge to existence.