"Marriage will be your first stepping-stone."
"To what?"
"Success."
"Success in what form?"
"Social success. I assume that your aim lies there. You want men and women of a certain grade to pay you courtesy and deference."
Claire seemed to muse, for a brief time. "Yes, I do," she then said. "You are quite right. But you speak of my gaining all this by marriage. How shall I meet the man who is to lend me such important help?"
There was a daring candor about this question—a simplicity of worldliness, in fact—which startled her hearer. But his usual gravity betrayed no signs of dismay.
"You will meet him," he said, tranquilly. "Oh, yes; you will meet him. It is your fate. He will drop to you from the skies. But after you have secured through matrimony this desired end, will you be contented with what you have secured? So much depends on that—the success of your success, as one might say."
Claire raised her brows in demure perplexity. "I don't understand," she murmured.
Thurston slowly shook his head. A smile was on his lips, but it held sadness, and a hint of pity as well. "If I read you rightly," he answered, "you will understand, some day."