"Well, my dear girl, surely it's a natural assumption, is it not?"
"Oh, I suppose so. But——"
"Yes?"
"Well, I don't think in real life it's the same thing that you read about in novels, do you, Dick?"
"What? Being in love?"
"Yes."
"Well, perhaps not; but I imagine it ought to be something pretty pronounced, you know, even in such a pale reflection of the novels as real life. I gather that it ought to be; seriously, Loo, I think it ought to be. I suppose you do love Woodthrop, don't you?"
My sister looked a little distressed, and I half-regretted having put so direct a question. I was sufficiently the product of my day to be terribly afraid of any kind of interference with my fellow creatures. Our apotheosis of individual liberty had made any such action anathema, "bad form," a sin more resented in the sinner than cowardice or dishonesty, or than any kind of wickedness which was strictly personal and, as you might say, self-contained. Our one object of universal reverence and respect was the personal equation.
"There, Loo," I said, "I didn't mean to tease you." Thus, in accordance with my traditions, I brushed aside and apologized for my natural interest in her well-being in the same way that my poor father and his like brushed away all matters of topical import, and the average man of the period brushed aside all concern with his fellow men, all responsibility for the common weal.
"No," she said, "I know you didn't. And, indeed, Dick, I suppose I don't love Herbert as well as I ought; but—but, Dick, you don't know what it is to be a girl. You can go off to Cambridge, and presently you will go out into the world and live your own life in your own way. But it's different for me, Dick. A girl is not supposed to want to live her own life; she is just part of the home, and the home——. Well, Dick, you know father's life, and mother—poor mother——"