“Florence?” I asked. “She said she loved most to be loved.”
“We all do,” said Henry; “to be loved, and to love others.”
“I would like,” said Florence, “to dance as well as my dancing teacher.”
I expressed grave doubts as to the permanence of this ambition.
“But,” I said, “what I mean, Marian, is that you want to be a certain kind of person, that you must have an idea of yourself which, even unconsciously, you try to attain; and it is this ideal, this vision of the self you wish to be, and mean to be, that should color and shape your life, as an artist’s idea of his central figure and meaning controls his whole execution.”
“I’m sure I don’t think of it all the time,” she said; “I like just to live along, and dream, and be what I happen to be.”
“Now, Marian,” I answered, “you are saying what you think is true. But I will show you that it is not. You live for your desired self, even unconsciously. Do you not remember doing or leaving undone certain little things which your ideal of yourself wanted otherwise, and then reproaching yourself for days for this small lapse into selfishness or unkindness?”
They had all had this annoying experience, as well as I myself. Marian told how, when she was quite a small girl, something had happened that she had never forgotten. A little beggar-girl, with only rubbers over her stockings, came to the door and asked Marian for old clothes. Marian had been reading stories, and was longing to act them. But her mother was out, and she had not the courage to do anything; so she turned the child away with a mumbled excuse about her mother’s not being at home. And she had never forgiven herself.
Marian saw that what I meant by a definite aim in life was, after all, indefinite enough to suit her.
Virginia said: “When I want to do some kind or good thing which it is hard to do, because I lack courage, I make up my mind that I will do it anyway, without thinking; I walk right in, and then the rest is always easy and pleasant.”