"I know you've guessed, Mrs. Carnby!" broke in Margery, "and, after all, it's just as well, because I must speak to some one. I feel, somehow, as if I'd lost my way, and I think I'm a little frightened. I've always been very sure of myself till now, very confident of my ability to judge what was the right thing to do, and to get on without advice. But now—it's different. I'm unhappy."
Mrs. Carnby slid her arm across the girl's shoulders.
"Go on, my dear," she said. "I didn't mean that I wasn't willing to listen—only that I wouldn't like to feel that I was surprising your confidence."
"First of all," said Margery, "and in spite of everybody's kindness to me, I'm afraid I hate this new life, which is so different from everything I've learned to know and love. I hate all this pretence and posing which we're carrying on, day after day, among people who smirk before our faces and ridicule us behind our backs; and I'm coming to hate myself worst of all. I want my life to be better than that of a butterfly among a lot of wasps! In America I hadn't time to stop and think whether I was happy or not, and I've read somewhere that that is just what true happiness means. Everything was very natural and simple over there. I used to wake up wanting to sing, and life seemed to begin all over again every morning. And then, without the least warning, came to me—what you've guessed, you know. I was sure of it at once. There was nothing said, but one feels such things, don't you think?—feels them coming, just as one feels the dawn sometimes, even while it's still quite dark? I had a little hint or two—just enough to make me confident and happier than ever. I knew there were reasons for his not speaking: I guessed at his grandfather, and a very little thought showed me that it could do no harm to wait. I wanted him to be sure, just as sure as I was. I was even content to come away and leave him. I knew, you see, and I saw it was only a question of time. I never doubted for a moment how it would end, and so I wasn't the least bit surprised when he came through the salon door, that Sunday in Paris. I thought—I was sure he'd come for me. I could have shouted, I was so happy, Mrs. Carnby! I had to turn away and pretend to be admiring some roses, I remember, because I felt that I was smiling—no, grinning—and just at nothing! Well—"
She paused, with a catch in her throat, and then went on determinedly.
"I've—I've been waiting ever since. We're good friends, almost too good friends, but there's something missing, something gone. I'm afraid you'll hardly understand me if I say that ever since last summer in Beverly I've felt that he belonged to me—all of him—every bit. Now—well, I can't feel that way any longer. It is just as if I were sharing him with somebody or something, and not getting the better or even the larger part. I've heard—well, you know how gossip goes! I've heard that there was another girl. He's been seen with her, often and often. People might have spared me, if they'd known: but of course they didn't; and so I've picked up fragments and fragments of talk, and every one has cut me like a knife. In the midst of all this, he came to me and asked me—no! he asked me nothing, but I knew what he meant. I put him off. I felt that I must have time to think. But the moment for decision has come. He may ask me again at any time. What shall I say? Fairy godmother, what shall I say? I want to trust him! I want to stake my confidence in him against all the gossip in the world. And yet if he's only asking me because he thinks I expect it, if he really doesn't want me—"
"He does want you!" said Mrs. Carnby. "I could shake you, Margery. You're so far off the track, and at the same time you make it so hard to show you why. Let me see."
She hesitated, biting her lips.
"Look here," she continued suddenly. "Suppose you had a baby brother, for example, and you loved him better than all the world, and you knew that, in his baby way, he felt the same love for you, and you should carry him, all of a jump, into the next room, and plant him down in front of a ten-foot Christmas-tree, all blazing with candles and glass balls and whatchercallems—cornucopias—would you be surprised if he hadn't any use for you for at least an hour? No, you wouldn't—not a bit of it! You'd think it quite natural. Well, there you are! You are yourself, and baby brother's Andrew Vane, and the Christmas tree's Paris: and you'll just have to wait, that's all, till he's through blinking and sucking his thumb!"