“Why won’t you, Grace?” he begged. “There’ll never be anybody else for me or for you. Father and mother and Eva love you almost as much as I do, and on your side your mother and Guy have always seemed to take it as a matter of course that we’d marry. It isn’t the drinking, is it, dear?”
“No, it’s not that, Custer. Of course I’ll marry you—some day; but not yet. Why, I haven’t lived yet, Custer! I want to live. I want to do something outside of the humdrum life that I have always led and the humdrum life that I shall live as a wife and mother. I want to live a little, Custer, and then I’ll be ready to settle down. You all tell me that I am beautiful, and down, away down in the depth of my soul, I feel that I have talent. If I have, I ought to use the gifts God has given me.”
She was speaking very seriously, and the man listened patiently and with respect, for he realized that she was revealing for the first time a secret yearning that she must have long held locked in her bosom.
“Just what do you want to do, dear?” he asked gently.
“I—oh, it seems silly when I try to put it in words, but in dreams it is very beautiful and very real.”
“The stage?” he asked.
“It is just like you to understand!” Her smile rewarded him. “Will you help me? I know mother will object.”
“You want me to help you take all the happiness out of my life?” he asked.
“It would only be for a little while—just a few years, and then I would come back to you—after I had made good.”
“You would never come back, Grace, unless you failed,” he said. “If you succeeded, you would never be contented in any other life or atmosphere. If you came back a failure, you couldn’t help but carry a little bitterness always in your heart. It would never be the same dear, care-free heart that went away so gayly. Here you have a real part to play in a real drama—not make-believe upon a narrow stage with painted drops.” He flung out a hand in broad gesture. “Look at the setting that God has painted here for us to play our parts in—the parts that He has chosen for us! Your mother played upon the same stage, and mine. Do you think them failures? And both were beautiful girls—as beautiful as you.”