But her restlessness did
not diminish.
"I never saw such an ungrateful girl," was Mrs. Carnarvon's comment upon
one of Marian's outbursts of almost peevish fretting. "What do you want?"
"That's just it," exclaimed Marian, half-laughing. "What _do_ I want?
I look all about me and I can't see it. Yet I know that there must be
something. I think I ought to have been a man. Sometimes I feel like
running away--away off somewhere. I feel as if I were getting second-bests,
paste substitutes for the real jewels. I feel as I did when I was a child
and demanded the moon. They gave me a little gilt crescent and said: 'Here
is a nice little moon for baby;' and it made me furious."
Mrs. Carnarvon looked irritated. "I don't understand it. You are getting
the best of everything. Of course you can't expect to be happy. I don't
suppose that any one is happy. But all the solid things of life are yours,
and you can and should be comfortable and contented."
"That's just it," answered Marian indignantly. "I have always been swaddled
in cotton wool. I have never been allowed really to feel. I think it is the
spirit of revolt in me. Yes, I ought to have been a man. I'm sure that then
I could have made life a little less tiresome."
It was this dissatisfaction that postponed the announcement of the
engagement from month to month until a year had slipped away.
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