"You're not past feeling. You would never have come to stay with us if you were. You know you're reaching out towards something that will lift you out of your sordid life. There's no other word for it. You're an earth grub, that's what you are. The life you're leading—spending money because other people do it, treating those who take your generosity as a matter of course, and living in mortal dread of every post because it brings you bills and duns which you cannot pay—why, it is a hell on earth!"
"Say on! Hammer me down!"
Rowena laughed a little unsteadily.
"Di, dear. I've always liked you, partly because Mrs. Burke was so fond of you, partly for your own sake. Do use your mental powers. There are many circles in the world, all different, but all moving round their own centres. Change your centre. If one circle fails you—or one centre I'll say—for goodness' sake don't go on tramping it for ever, but leave it and try another."
"Now this is what I like. My brain is just clever enough to understand it!"
"You may laugh and mock at me, but I'm in dead earnest. I feel like Alice through the looking-glass, as if I should like to shake the red queen into a kitten. I would like to shake and shake you till your foundation tumbled down, and you were shaken into a new kind of creature altogether, with fresh joy in life, and fresh springs in your heart, and fresh hopes and ideals in front of you."
"Don't mix your metaphors. Keep to the circles. I won't be shaken into a kitten."
"There's only one circle I want you in."
"Of course, I know which one that is—the one you're in yourself, the one into which you dragged Mrs. Burke. I'll allow it made her happy; but she always was a happy creature, and always would be in any circumstances."
"Do you think she would have been when everything that she cared for was taken from her?"