Mrs. Percy-Bartlett looked at Gertrude with undisguised astonishment in her eyes.
“What queer ideas you are getting into your head, Gertrude! I am glad you are going to Europe so soon. The change will do you good.”
“I hope it will, Harriet,” said Gertrude earnestly, “for I am really wofully out of sorts. I have often thought, don’t you know, that it was a glorious thing that we women of to-day are not contented to take everything for granted, and are inclined to do a little reading and thinking for ourselves. But we pay the penalty for our intellectual emancipation in various ways. Isn’t it Byron who says that ‘knowledge is sorrow, and he who knows the most must mourn the most.’”
“What a curious girl you are, Gertrude! I didn’t know that anybody ever quoted Byron in these days. He’s so old-fashioned, is he not? But, Gertrude, I am really worried about you. Surely it isn’t our fault if the world is all wrong. What can we do to set things right? Absolutely nothing, my dear. We might as well feel sorry that the Japanese have killed a lot of Chinamen, as to worry about the poverty and distress on the East Side—or is it the West Side—of this great city. I’m sorry, Gertrude, that you aren’t literary, or musical, or something of that kind. It’s a wonderful thing to have an outlet for just such moods as you are in. If it wasn’t for my music, I don’t know what I’d do at times. Something reckless, I’m afraid.”
“No,” said Gertrude sadly, “I haven’t anything of that kind to help me out. I sometimes wish that I could write a great novel. I know, of course, that that sounds absurd, but I do so want to do something worth doing.”
Mrs. Percy-Bartlett smiled amusedly at her companion.
“I hope,” she said, “that you won’t give way to the temptation, my dear. But, seriously, Gertrude, I want you to make me a promise, a solemn promise, for the sake of your own happiness.”
“What is it?” asked Gertrude, a sad smile on her face. “I am in the mood to promise almost anything.”
“Then, Gertrude,” said Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, gently stroking her friend’s hand, “then, I want you to promise me that you will fall in love.”
Gertrude laughed, almost merrily.