“If Naomi rebels, she’ll be up against it.... I want her to be happy. Oh, I couldn’t bear to see her muddling and experimenting as I’ve muddled and experimented; a failure as I’ve failed. She must learn to please the Phillips family, and conform to Phillips’ standards. For her, there’s only happiness in conformity.”
“And for you?”
“Yes—and for me. That’s partly racial, you know. The Jewish girl isn’t meant to be a pioneer of freedom.”
“Nell——”
“Nell, I honestly do believe for your greater rest to-night, Gillian, would have succumbed anyhow. She’s really deep down passionate—not only a surface affair.... I say, isn’t it curious how we’ve always deplored the waste of Charlotte Verity’s fanatical tolerance on Antonia who doesn’t need it?—It fits in splendidly now for Nell. She’ll make a heroine of Nell, and simply love having her there.”
“The pattern preconceived....” Gillian murmured. “Then was it also decreed since the first evolution from chaos, O Deborah, that you should fit into the Phillips’ scheme at last?”
“It seems like it,” not altogether ruefully. “When I tried to play the old game, just once, just for fun, it politely informed me that it had no further use for my services,” and on an impulse she confided in Gillian her expedition to Jermyn Street, three months ago.
“Blair—behaved quite well,” was Gillian’s sole comment.
“Oh yes. Blair is a man of experience. There’s a mellowness about him—Had it been a chivalrous hot-headed young knight to whom I had flown in distressed rebellion, he would have urged me to abandon my home and husband, and trust my future to him—and we’d have been unhappy ever after.”
“Is Samson still suspicious?”