"Where,"
Anette asked her, "shall you stay when you get back--at Savina
Grove's?" No, Mina replied, her hours would be too long and uncertain
to allow that; probably she would be at the Plaza. Lee had heard the
Groves' name mentioned before in connection with Mina Raff; and he made
an effort to recall the reason. The Groves--it was the William Loyd
Groves--were rather important people, financially and socially; and one
of them, yes, that was it, was related to Mina, but which he didn't
know.
More came back to him: Mina Raff's parents had died when she was a
young girl, and the Groves had rescued her from the undistinguished
evils of improvidence; she had lived with them until, against their
intensest objections, she had gone into moving pictures. Probably the
Groves' opposition had lasted until Mina's success; or, in other words,
their support had been withheld from her through the period when it had
been most needed.
Yes, the girl had a determined mouth. If he, Lee Randon, had followed
his first inclinations--were they in the way of literature?--how
different his life would have been. Mina Raff had been stronger, more
selfish, than her environment: selfishness and success were synonymous.
Yet, as a human quality, it was more hated, more reviled, than any
other. Its opposite was held as the perfect, the heavenly, ethics of
conduct. To be sacrificed, that was the accepted essence of Christ;
fineness came through relinquishment.
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