“No,” she said quietly. “Not I. I want you to be serious, Phil.” She paused a moment, looking down, and when her eyes sought his again he saw in them the spark of a very genuine interest. “I don’t know whether you know it or not, Phil, but I’m really very fond of you. And if I didn’t understand you as well as I do, of course, I wouldn’t dare to be so frank.”
Philip Gallatin inclined his head slightly.
“Go on, please,” he said.
She hesitated a moment and then clutched his arm with her strong fingers.
“I want you to wake up, Phil,” she said with sudden insistence. “I want you to wake up, to open your eyes wide—wide, do you hear, to stretch your intellectual fibers and learn something of your own strength. You’re asleep, Boy! You’ve been asleep for years! I want you to wake up—and prove the stuff that’s in you. You’re the last of your line, Phil, the very last; but whatever the faults your fathers left you, you’ve got their genius, too.”
Gallatin was slowly shaking his head.
“Not that—only——”
“I know it,” she said proudly. “You can’t hide from everybody, Phil. I still remember those cases you won when you were just out of law-school—that political one and the other of the drunkard indicted on circumstantial evidence——”
“I was interested in that,” he muttered.
“You’ll be interested again. You must be. Do you hear? You’ve come to the parting of the ways, Phil, and you’ve got to make a choice. You’re drifting with the tide, and I don’t like it, waiting for Time to provide your Destiny when you’ve got the making of it in your own hands. You’ve got to put to sea, hoist what sail you’ve got and brave the elements.”