“You are little more than a child. You have a great career before you—who can say what may happen in the future? Women without careers change their minds—their tastes. These things are out of one's own control, and in your case——“
“My mind may change, but my soul cannot. I may dance, I may amuse myself, I may have friends. Make no mistake. I can tell you all that is in me. I find life beautiful. The theatre enchants me. I could work there all day. I have no illusions about it—the paint, the machinery, the box-office, the advertisements—the vulgarity are familiar enough to me. But I find a box-office, and machinery, and vulgarity everywhere, though they are called by other names.”
Sara coloured and looked away.
“I am getting stronger now,” continued Brigit. “I can lift up my head and see the world as it is. I like it—yes, with all its griefs and its horrors—I like it. When one is ill or sentimental one hates it, because it wasn't made for the sick, and it was not created us a playground for lovers. One may love—yes, but one must work. I intend to love and work at the same time.”
“Many find that these two occupations clash! There is a time in love—just as there is a period in life—when it seems enough in itself. It is independent of circumstances and persons. O, but that time soon passes! As you learn more, you look for more. And work is no cure for dissatisfaction. If you can live through it you will just be a machine with one refrain—‘I know nothing! I have nothing! I am nothing!’”
The two young girls did not look at each other. Brigit could recognise an agitation of the soul in the imperceptible sadness of the voice, and she guessed poor Sara's secret.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I must suffer all that. How can you be sure that I have not suffered it already? At any rate, I hope this confidence will increase your kindness toward me.”
“I have no kindness toward you—none at all,” said Sara. “I have no kindness toward any living creature. I should like to die and come to an end. I wasn't born to put up with make-shifts. Other women may be resigned to that paltry way of existing. If they can't have what they want, they will take what they don't want; they will take what they hate, and grin—yes, they will grin and bear it. And after a little while, because they become gradually drunk with suffering, they begin to think they are noble. They are not noble. They are fools, fools, fools!”
“I shan't accept make-shifts,” answered Brigit. “I intend to keep all my ideals, but they are all unfinished at present. I have just the outlines and beginnings of them—nothing else.”
“I am not talking about ideals. I am speaking of realities. I don't want to be happy, but I do wish to be one of four things: either perfectly alive, or perfectly, utterly dead; either a pure spirit, or a faultless animal. This dead-and-alive, body-and-soul mixture which passes for a well-disciplined human being is loathsome to me. It is a tissue of lies and hypocrisies.”