Page:Undset - Jenny (1921).djvu/92

 savage beast. The consuming rage which filled her when they tormented her was always hidden behind a scornful, indifferent smile. Once she had nearly cried her eyes out with rage and misery, and when on one or two occasions she had lost control of herself, she had seen their triumph. Only by putting on an air of placid, irritating indifference could she hold her own against them.

In the upper form she made friends with one or two girls; she was then at an age when no child can bear to be unlike others, and she tried to copy them. These friendships, however, did not give her much joy. She remembered how they made fun of her when they discovered that she played with dolls. She disowned her beloved children and said they belonged to her little sisters.

There was a time when she wanted to go on the stage. She and her friends were stage-struck; they sold their school books and their confirmation brooches to buy tickets, and night after night they went to the gallery of the theatre. One day she told her friends how she would act a certain part that interested them. They burst out laughing; they had always known she was conceited, but not that she was a megalomaniac. Did she really believe that she could become an artist, she, who could not even dance? It would be a pretty sight indeed to see her walk up and down the stage with that tall, stiff skeleton of hers.

No, she could not dance. When she was quite a child her mother used to play to her, and she twisted and turned, tripped and curtseyed as she liked, and her mother called her a little linnet. She thought of her first party, how she had arrived full of anticipation, happy in a new white dress which her mother had made after an old English picture. She remembered how she stiffened all over when she began to dance. That stiffness never quite left her; when she tried to learn dancing by herself her soft, slim body became stiff as a poker. She was no good