"Well--I should say that you possessed a capacity for
sudden and capricious action in large matters, equally
impatient of reasoning and indifferent to consequences,
which might be very awkward, and even tragic, to people
who happened to annoy you, or stand in your road.
You have the kind of organization in which, within a second,
without any warning or reason, a passing whim may have worked
itself up into an imperative law--something you must obey."
The man smiled and nodded approvingly: "You've got me
down fine," he said.
"I talk with a good deal of confidence," she went on,
with a cheerless, ruminative little laugh, "because it
is my own organization that I am describing, too.
The difference is that I was allowed to exploit my
capacity for mischief very early. I had my own way
in my teens--my own money, my own power--of course
only of a certain sort, and in a very small place.
But I know what I did with that power. I spread trouble
and misery about me--always of course on a small scale.
Then a group of things happened in a kind of climax--a
very painful climax--and it shook the nonsense out of me.
My brother and my father died--some other sobering things
happened...and luckily I was still young enough to stop short,
and take stock of myself, and say that there were certain
paths I would never set foot on again--and stick to it.
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