“Well, I wanted to marry him. It would have been satisfactory in every way. I’d have got back my position in society that we had to give up when father lost everything and—and died—and mother wanted to drag me off to live in Blue Mountain. Just think of it—Blue Mountain, Vermont!”
“I am thinking of it—or, rather, of Stoughton,” said Emily, with a shiver.
“And I simply wouldn’t go. I went to work instead.—But—well—I’m too lazy to work. I couldn’t—and I can’t. I can talk about it and pretend about it—but I can’t do it. And now I’ve got to choose between work and Blue Mountain once more.”
“But you had that choice before, and you didn’t go to Blue Mountain. Why are you so cut up now?”
“I’ve been skating on thin ice these last four years. And I’ve begun to think about the future.”
“How could I advise you? I can only say that you do well to think seriously about what you’re to do—if you won’t work.”
“I can’t, I simply can’t, work. It’s so common, so—Oh, I don’t see it as you do, as I was trying to make believe I saw it when I first talked to you. I feel degraded because I am not as we used to be. I want a big house and lots of servants and social position. You don’t know how low I feel in a street car. You don’t know how wretched I am when I am in the Waldorf or Sherry’s or driving in the Park in a hired hansom, or when I see the carriages in the evening with the women on their way to swell dinners or balls. You don’t know how I despise myself, how I have despised myself for the last four years. No wonder Frank wouldn’t marry me. He’d have been a fool to.” The tears were rolling down Theresa’s face.
It was impossible for Emily not to sympathize with a grief so genuine. “Poor girl,” she thought, “she can no more help being a snob than she can help being a brunette.” And she said aloud in a gentle voice: “What have you thought of doing?”
“I’ve got to marry,” answered Theresa. “And marry quick. And marry money.”
A queer look came into Emily’s face at this restatement of her own attempted solution of the Stoughton problem. Theresa misunderstood the look. “You are so unsympathetic,” she said, lighting a cigarette.