Senta was a Russian, the tiniest of women, wild, beautiful, nineteen.  She was a most dramatic and appealing little figure, and she knew it well.  She smoked and drank just as the young men of her set did, she danced like a madwoman, she sang and rode and skated with the fury of a witch.  She was like a child, over-dressed, overjewelled, her black hair fantastically arranged; always talking, always unhappy, a perfect type of the young female egotist.  She liked to use reckless expressions, to curl herself up on a couch, in a room dimly lighted, and scented with burning pastilles, and discuss her marriage, her age, her appearance, her effect upon other women.  Senta’s was an almost pathetic and very obvious desire to be considered daring, pantherine, seductive, dangerous.

Jim, fancying he understood her perfectly, played into her hand.  He would not flirt with her, but he took her at her own valuation, and they saw a good deal of each other.  Senta confessed to him, read him love letters, wrote him dashing, penitent little notes, and Jim scolded her in a brotherly way, laughed at her, and sometimes delighted her by forbidding her to do this or that, or by masterfully flinging some cherished note or photograph of hers into the fire.  He loved to hear her scold her maid in Russian; it seemed to him very cunning when this stately gipsy of a child took her seat in her box at the opera, or flung herself into the carriage, later, all the more a madcap because of three hours of playing the lady.  He exchanged smiling looks over her little dark head with her husband, when he dined at the Sturmers’; the good professor was far more observing than was usually supposed; he knew more of Jim’s character, it is probable, than Jim did himself; he knew that Senta was quite safe with the young American, and he liked him.  But Senta, who was quite unscrupulous, was slow to realize it.  She found this brotherly petting and scolding very well for a time, but months went by, a whole year went by, and there was no change in their relationship.  Senta was only precocious, she was neither clever nor well educated; she based her campaign on the trashy novels she read, and deliberately set herself to shake Jim from his calm pleasure in her society.

Then, suddenly, Jim was bored.  Charm dropped from her like a rich, enveloping cloak, and left only the pitiful little nude personality, a bundle of childish egotisms and shallow pretences.  Once he had been proud to escort her everywhere, now her complacent assumption that he should do so annoyed him; once he had laughed out heartily at her constant interruption of the old professor, her naive contention that she was never to be for one second ignored; now she only worried him, and made him impatient.  Her invitations poured upon him, her affectedly deep voice, reproachful or alluring, haunted his telephone.  She challenged him daringly, wickedly, across dinner tables, or from the centre of a tea-table group, to say “why he didn’t like her any more?”