Felicia opened her large hazel eyes still wider. "What a strange idea! It seems to me that you think too much about feelings and not enough about principles."
"But thinking about feelings makes you think about principles; feelings are the only things that ever make me think about principles at all."
After a few minutes' silence Elisabeth asked suddenly:
"What do you mean to do with your life when you leave here and take it up?"
"I don't know. I suppose I shall fall in love and get married. Most girls do. And I hope it will be with a clergyman, for I do so love parish work."
"I don't think I want to get married," said Elisabeth slowly, "not even to a clergyman."
"How queer of you! Why not?"
"Because I want to paint pictures and to become a great artist. I feel there is such a lot in me that I want to say, and that I must say; and I can only say it by means of pictures. It would be dreadful to die before you had delivered the message that you had been sent into the world to deliver, don't you think?"
"It would be more dreadful to die before you had found one man to whom you would be everything, and who would be everything to you," replied Felicia.
"Oh! I mean to fall in love, because everybody does, and I hate to be behindhand with things; but I shall do it just as an experience, to make me paint better pictures. I read in a book the other day that you must fall in love before you can become a true artist; so I mean to do so. But it won't be as important to me as my art," said Elisabeth, who was as yet young enough to be extremely wise.