"
"Oh, I don't think that." He was vaguely displeased at
being credited with common-sense. For a moment Miss Abbott
had seemed to him more unconventional than himself.
"I hope you see," she concluded, "why I have troubled
you with this long story. Women--I heard you say the other
day--are never at ease till they tell their faults out loud.
Lilia is dead and her husband gone to the bad--all through
me. You see, Mr. Herriton, it makes me specially unhappy;
it's the only time I've ever gone into what my father calls
'real life'--and look what I've made of it! All that winter
I seemed to be waking up to beauty and splendour and I don't
know what; and when the spring came, I wanted to fight
against the things I hated--mediocrity and dulness and
spitefulness and society. I actually hated society for a
day or two at Monteriano. I didn't see that all these
things are invincible, and that if we go against them they
will break us to pieces. Thank you for listening to so much
nonsense."
"Oh, I quite sympathize with what you say," said Philip
encouragingly; "it isn't nonsense, and a year or two ago I
should have been saying it too. But I feel differently now,
and I hope that you also will change. Society is
invincible--to a certain degree. But your real life is your
own, and nothing can touch it. There is no power on earth
that can prevent your criticizing and despising
mediocrity--nothing that can stop you retreating into
splendour and beauty--into the thoughts and beliefs that make
the real life--the real you.
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