"Because he is dull. He would spoil things for us."
"But doesn't it ever seem terrible to you, Zoe, that I haven't given you the opportunity to judge him for yourself? If the day ever comes—to-day, tomorrow, next year—that you want your father, you understand, dear, don't you, that I will be the first to—"
"I tell you No! No! Why do you always keep telling me that? No! No! It's better his not knowing there is a me! He makes me feel all suffocated up the way he did you. I couldn't stand it. I want to be what I want to be!"
"Oh, want it badly enough then, Zoe; want it badly enough!"
"The greatest singer in the world! That's what I want to be, and stand on a stage with all the music there is around me as if I was in the middle of an ocean of it. Lilly, will you take me to another matinée to see Bernhardt? She makes me feel what I want to be. Just—just her being what she—is makes me—want to be what I—am."
"You funny muddled youngster! Why, you didn't understand either what she said or what the play was about."
"I didn't need to. It was her voice. Something she says with her voice that I feel inside of me, only I can't say it. I wanted to cry. Isn't it queer, Lilly, to feel so happy you want to cry? Oh, I've learned a new one—only my voice won't say it the way I feel it. It's in our school Wordsworth. Something inside of me cries all the time I'm saying it:
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath elsewhere had its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, Who is our home.
"Oh, Lilly—Lilly—I love that!—trailing clouds of glory—"
"You recited it beautifully, darling. See, you've made me cry."