“Oh, Lord, I want something, and I’m hanged if I know what it is.... Only I’m tired of living in a groove. I want to try the big risks. I’m not a stick-in-the-mud....”
She herself could not have said whether this ran through her mind in the guise of a prayer or an exclamation. But perhaps it did not especially matter. “I guess when you want a thing,” she had once enunciated, “you pray for it without intending to. In fact you can’t want anything without praying for it every minute of the time you feel you’re wanting it.... As for putting it into words and kneeling down at bedtime, I should say that makes no difference....”
But she did not know what she wanted, except that it was to be exciting and full of interest....
She fell asleep gazing vacantly at a framed lithograph on the opposite wall which a shaft of moonlight capriciously illumined. It was a picture of Tennyson reading his In Memoriam to Queen Victoria, the poet, long-haired and impassioned, in an appropriately humble position before his sovereign....
§ 5
The following morning a typewritten letter waited her arrival in the basement sitting-room. It bore on the flap the seal of a business firm in London, and Catherine opened it without in the least guessing its contents.
It began:
MY DEAR CATHIE,
You will excuse my writing to you, but this is really nothing but a business letter. I found your address by enquiry at the theatre box-office: the method is somewhat irregular, but I hope you will forgive me.
What I want to say is this——