‘To fit myself for my future work—yes. The Spanish school-boards are just as conservative as English ones. A young woman armed with Cambridge certificates would have more chance of coming to the front than another, equally strong-minded, who should rely on her own merits.’
‘Strong-minded!’ Dinah ejaculated with horror. ‘At your age, with all the sweet happiness of life still to come, you talk, as though you approved such things, of being strong-minded?’
Marjorie swept off the heads from a cluster of wayside camomile flowers with the stick of her sunshade. An expression of will which yet was neither unlovely nor unfeminine glowed upon her girlish face.
‘Let us understand each other better, Mrs. Arbuthnot. It may well be that our notions of “sweet happiness” are not the same.’
Dinah looked uneasy, and kept silent.
‘Power—I will make a confession to you such as I never made before—power is my ideal of happiness. I want to rule, we will hope for good; in any case, to rule, to be needed on all sides, sought after, distinguished—to see my name in print! That is the truth, no matter how I may wrap truth up in fine-sounding words,’ said Marjorie Bartrand. ‘That is the secret of my enthusiasm for humanity, and of my personal ambition. To lead others, to command, is my ideal of happiness.’
‘And mine,’ exclaimed Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife unhesitatingly, ‘is—to obey. For a woman to look up to another stronger life, to be ruled by a stronger will, gladly to take all little household worries on herself—I speak badly, Miss Bartrand, but you guess my meaning—and feel more than paid by one kind look or word in return, to know that as much as she wants of the world is safe between four lowly walls, to have her hours filled with the care of others, to keep her parlour bright and cheerful, to hear the voices of the children——’
Dinah’s own voice broke; and Marjorie, who had watched her with looks of lofty compassion, softened involuntarily.
‘So far from speaking badly, Mrs. Arbuthnot, you speak with very pretty eloquence. You draw a picture of constant giving up, which, if one could believe it to be from life, would, I confess, be attractive. It is drawn from life, perhaps?’
‘Oh—no; I said only that would be my ideal of happiness,’ faltered Dinah, with a pang.