And Joy was conscious of an overpowering loneliness. It was a barren feeling; she had never really loved. She had not known Mabel’s radiance or Jerry’s ecstatic fireworks, in the disturbing thrills that had been hers in the past which now seemed so far removed it was as if it belonged to another life. And now, with Jerry silent but not asleep by her side, she felt suddenly, horribly alone. Jerry was her best friend, and save for Jim, her only friend. Yet how that friendship sank into insignificance now. Jerry’s world was full; all her world and life were but one man; and Joy was outside. She lost herself in sleep, where she dreamed that the only person remaining in her world who spelled anything in life to her, had left her. She woke up sobbing bitterly, with “Jim!” on her lips. All was toneless dark, that breathless hour of earliest morning when vitality is at its lowest ebb yet sometimes the heart may beat at its highest. Things are seen at that hour with uninfluenced clarity of vision. And Joy gasped in the shock of the knowledge that was rising within her. Jim Dalton was the only person left—who spelled anything in life to her. Jerry was sleeping quietly; her tears fell unconsoled. “Jim!” she sobbed again; and with his name trembling through the black fringe of dawn, she fell asleep. X The next day was Saturday, and Félicie returned around noon just as Jerry left Joy in a whirlwind of breathless anticipation. Félicie was pale and sulky from dancing all night and having to come back to New York the next morning. “I missed a dance this afternoon and a wonderful one this evening,” she crabbed, taking off her outer raiment and donning a kimono, before lying on the bed to recuperate. At Joy’s question of why she hadn’t stayed the house-party through, she batted an injured brown velvet orb. “How could I, with Greg here and acting so awfully just because I wanted to go to Princeton for one day. He needn’t think I’d give up every evening to him—especially after the way he talked Thursday. I tell you, Joy, it’s awful to be in love. I never did such an inconvenient thing as I did when I fell in love with Greg.” Joy stifled her laughter. “Did you have a good time?” “Marvelous—simply marvelous. Princeton is the house-party girl’s Mecca. It’s mean of Greg to act so—it isn’t as if I could be asked to Princeton for many more years.” Joy ran a scale, poising it neatly through the air and listening to the smoothness of tone. In the morning sun, music was more alive and satisfactory, even with no piano near. It was part of her—and little fluctuations of feeling were to be ignored, when she knew that all her being was absorbed in one great purpose. It had been silly of her to grow sentimental just because she had been doused in the atmosphere of sentiment. Inconsistently, she felt angry at Félicie. “I can’t imagine being in love with a man and going off skating with a dozen others.”