"I think," she said meekly, "that when you're young, you look forward to being a success, you work with that object, and you are always hoping and looking for that to be accomplished. I have been bitterly disappointed already in some people and things, but I don't feel I have got to the end of it. Miss Lorraine seems living in a quiet little peaceful backwater, while I am pushing my way down the river to the sea."
"And what is your goal?" asked Mrs. Gordon.
"If you had asked me that a few months ago, I should have said fame, but I am sure now that I shall never be famous, only I want to leave some marks behind me. I don't want to have a wasted life to look back upon."
"And so you think that Frances Lorraine is leading a passive life; and you an active?"
Jean blushed.
"I am not fit to black her shoes," she said impulsively. And then she changed the conversation.
She told Mrs. Gordon a little of her art life in Paris.
"I feel now that it wasn't my art that was wrong, but my atmosphere. You don't know what a pleasure it is to me to paint Sunnie. She is so sweet and pure, it seems to take away the bad taste in my mouth that the Paris studio gave me."
"Sunnie is too old for her age," said Mrs. Gordon. "But her life is so entirely with grown-up people, that one cannot wonder at it."
"I don't know much about children," admitted Jean, "but she fascinates me. And I believe she will influence me, too. Miss Lorraine makes me wish to be good, but I believe Sunnie will make me try to be so."