crude realities. The chiaroscuro of their experiences is thus so
constantly changing and recomposing that--whatever the apparent result
of the scene in fact--the dreamer is in retrospect always victor, in the
heroic limelight. With Jenny this was a mood, not a preoccupation; but
when she had been moved or excited beyond the ordinary she often did
tend to put matters in a fresh aspect, more palatable to her self-love,
and more picturesque in detail than the actual happening. That is one of
the advantages of the rapidly-working brain, that its power of
improvisation is, in solitude, very constant and reassuring. It is as
though such a grain, upon this more strictly personal side, were a
commonwealth of little cell-building microbes. The chief microbe comes,
like the engineer, to estimate the damage to one's _amour propre_ and to
devise means of repair. He then summons all his necessary workmen, who
are tiny self-loves and ancient praises and habitual complacencies and
the staircase words of which one thinks too late for use in the scene
itself; and with their help he restores that proportion without which
the human being cannot maintain his self-respect. Jenny was like the
British type as recorded in legend; being beaten, she never admitted it;
but even, five minutes later, through the adroitness of her special
engineer and his handymen, would be able quite seriously to demonstrate
a victory to herself.

Defeat? Never! How Alf and Emmy shrank now before her increasing skill
in argument. How were they shattered! How inept were their feebleness!
How splendid Jenny had been, in act, in motive, in speech, in
performance!

"Er, yes!" Jenny said, beginning to ridicule her own highly coloured
picture. "Well, it was _something_ like that!" She had too much sense of
the ridiculous to maintain for long unquestioned the heroic vein as