Courtney laughed—rather disagreeably. Helen was confirming her own newly formed, anything but exalted opinion of herself as a human value. "I suppose it'll never for an instant occur to anyone that I might be the discontented one."
"Well, you know, yourself, Courtney," stammered Helen, "it doesn't seem likely a woman'd give up a good husband and a good home——"
Courtney's arresting smile was bitterly ironic. "Indeed it doesn't," assented she. "Give up what she married for? Not unless she was sure of a better living. Men think they marry for love—but it's really to—I'm not equal to saying why men marry. You can find the reason in Ben Franklin's autobiography, if you care to look it up. As for us women—it's the living."
"It's not true of me!" cried Helen, who had in all its amusing, or exasperating, efflorescence the universal feminine passion for drawing everything down to the personal, for seeking a compliment to herself or a reflection upon herself in any and every remark addressed to her by man or woman. "Poor as I am, I'm——"
"Never mind, dear," said Courtney with good-humored raillery. "At your age I was talking the same way. You'll find out some day that the hardest person in the world to get acquainted with is your real self. Why, there isn't one human being in ten million who'd know his real self if they met in the street." She rose to inspect the thick mat of morning-glories trellised up the end of the veranda. "And most of us, if we were introduced to our real selves, would refuse to speak to such low creatures—especially the romantic people."
"I know I'd not marry for anything but love!"
Courtney, her back to Helen, was busy with the morning-glories. "Of course," said she. "One may eat because one is fond of the dinner—of the dishes, of the way it's served, of the company, and so on, and so on. But what's the real reason?" She turned on Helen with a mocking smile. "Why, because to live one must eat. That makes the rest incidental. A sensible person tries to take the most favorable view of the food he has to eat or go without. A sensible woman does her best to love the man that asks her."
"I wish you wouldn't say that sort of things, Courtney," Helen cried. "I know illusions are illusions, but I want to keep them."
Courtney's expression changed abruptly. The deep-green eyes looked dreamily away. "If only one could keep them!" she said. "But one can't." She shook her head sadly. "One can't." Then her face brightened. "My dear, it's better to throw them away oneself and get—perhaps something better—certainly something truer—in place of them. Sooner or later life will snatch them away, anyhow—and leave one quite naked." She turned sad, mysterious eyes on the girl. "You don't know," she went on, "what it has cost me, this being bred in illusions. Illusions—everywhere! Illusions for and about everything and everybody! Oh, Helen—Helen—that's what's the matter with us women. That's why we're such poor creatures—why we make such bad marriages, why we're such imperfect wives and mothers. We don't think. We purr or scratch."
A long pause, then Helen sighed. "And I believed you and Richard were happy!"