I want Peyton, yes, I love him; but what I thought
would satisfy me doesn't. I want more! I am very serious about the
romantic play--it is exactly what I mean. I had read about great
emotions, seen them since I was a child at the opera, and there was the
Madrid affair; but that was so far away, and I never thought of the
others as real; I never understood that people really had them, in
Eastlake as well as Spain, until I watched Peyton miss his. And then it
came over me in a flash what life could be."
"We are all in the same fix, Claire," he told her.
"But not you," she replied impatiently; "your existence with Fanny is
the most perfect for miles around. Fanny is marvelous to you, and you
are as sensible as you are nice."
"You think, then, that I haven't seen any of this romantic show you are
talking about?"
"If you had you wouldn't let it spoil your comfort."
The pig again!
"Well, what is it here or there?" she cried. "I'll feel like this for a
little and then die alive. Did you ever notice an old woman, Lee? She
is like a horrid joke. There is something unconquerably vain and
foolish about old men that manages to save them from entire ruin. But a
woman shrivelled and blasted and twisted out of her purpose--they
either look as though they had been steeped in vinegar or filled with
tallow--is simply obscene. Before it is too harrowing, and in their
best dresses and flowers, they ought to step into a ball-room of
chloroform.
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