Then Raven remembered, as if she had invited a beam of light to throw up what would appeal to him as her perfections, that she did seem to him an alien among her youthful kind, and a shy alien at that, as if she hoped they might not discover how different she was and put her through some of those subtle tortures the young have in wait for a strange creature in the herd.
"No," he said, "you're not like the rest of them. I should have said it was because you're more beautiful. But it's something beyond that. What is it?"
"Don't you know?" said Nan, turning to him, incredulous and even a little accusatory, as if he should long ago have settled it for her doubting mind whether it was a gain for her or irreparable loss. "No, I see you don't. Well, it's Aunt Anne."
"Aunt Anne?"
"Yes. I never had the college life girls have now. When she sent me to the seminary, it was the privatest one she could find. If she could have exiled me to mid-Victorianism she would. I don't say I should have liked college life. Maybe I shouldn't. Except the athletics. Anyhow, I can hold my own there. I was enough of a tomboy to get into training and keep fit. And Rookie—now don't tell—I never do—I see lots of girls, perfectly nice girls, too, doing things Aunt Anne would have died before she'd let me do. And what do you think? I don't envy them because they're emancipated. I look at them, and I feel precisely what Aunt Anne would feel, though I don't seem to get excited about it. The same word comes into my mind, that word all the girls have run away from: unladylike! Isn't that a joke, Rookie? Charlotte would say it's the crowner."
"You're a sweet thing, Nan," said Raven, musing. He did wonder whether she was really in revolt against Aunt Anne's immovable finger.
"Smoking!" said Nan, her eyebrows raised in humorous recollection. "I used to be half dead over there, dog tired, keyed up to the last notch. You know! I'd have given a year of life for a cigarette, when I saw what the others got out of it. I was perfectly willing to smoke. I was eager to. But I'd think of Aunt Anne, and I simply couldn't do it."
Then it seemed to him that, since Aunt Anne's steel finger had resulted in such a superfine product of youth, they'd better not blame her too radically. It was her tyranny, but it was a tyranny lineally sprung from a stately past.
"I don't believe it was Aunt Anne alone," he said. "It was your remembering a rather fine inheritance. Your crowd think they're very much emancipated, but they've lost the sense of form, beauty, tradition. You couldn't go all the way with them. You couldn't be rough-haired."
"At any rate," said Nan, "I can't be young: in the sense they're young. I'm a 'strayed reveler,' that's all. But I don't know why I'm painting a Sargent portrait of me. Yes, I do. I want to squeeze everything I can out of this darling minute together, so when we don't have any more minutes I can go back to this. And you can remember, in case you ever need me, just what sort of an old Nan I am."