"Too great," said she. "Honestly, do you think me improved since my marriage?"
"Improved? No. Why should you improve? You are just what you were meant to be, as you always were."
"I know. You called me a perfect woman a little while ago, and you said my surroundings were imperfect. You must have meant that they did not suit me, or that I did not suit them. Which was it?"
"They ought to suit you," said Griggs. "If they do not, it is not your fault."
"But I might have done something to make them suit me. I sometimes think that I have not treated them properly."
"Why should you blame yourself? You did not make them, and they cannot unmake you. You have a right to be yourself. Everybody has. It is the first right. Your surroundings owe you more than you owe to them, because you are what you are, and they are not what they ought to be. Let them bear the blame. As for not treating them properly, no one could accuse you of that."
"I do not know—some one might. People are so strange, sometimes."
She stopped, and he answered nothing. Looking down into the open piano, she idly watched the hammers move as she pressed the keys softly with one hand.
"Some people are just like this," she said, smiling, and repeating the action. "If you touch them in a certain way, they answer. If you press them gently, they do not understand. Do you see? The hammer comes just up to the string, and then falls back again without making any noise. I suppose those are my surroundings. Sometimes they answer me, and sometimes they do not. I like things I can be sure of."
"And by things you mean people," suggested Griggs.