I
cannot think why you should choose to hold this dreary outlook before
your eyes. It seems a strange contrast to the popular belief that
prevails about your happy condition."
She curled her thin, pretty lips into a smile of incisive sarcasm and
drew a weary breath before she answered me. Then she said in a half
melancholy tone:
"Yes, I know that it is the fate of rich people to be envied. I know
that my different circumstances are coveted by girls that are a
thousandfold happier than I, and it is a miserable thing to realize,
but how can I help it? Amey, to tell you the wretched truth, I am sick
of life, and if there can be respite for me in death, I wish I might
die tonight. You may think this is the fruit of a gloomy mood, but it
is the result of long reflection. Last night I was gay, I sang and
played and chatted merrily. Men admired and flattered me, but what is
left of it all to-day? Nothing but ashes. I know that what they said
was not sincere, and still I remember it all with a girlish
gratification. If we were always singing and dancing, and fooling one
another, life might be more endurable, but these intervals of dreary
re-action are a dear price for our social pleasures." She paused for a
moment and then added slowly.
"Sometimes I am tempted to renounce my wordly life and go quietly into
some holy retreat where all such troubles are kept at bay, and then
the thought becomes repulsive when I think of how worthless I have
been, and how worthless I would still be among useful women.
Pages:
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142