The entire party started down the avenue of palms toward the ocean.
The “Automobile Girls” were thrilled with the beauty of the great stretch of blue water. Marian De Lancey Smythe, too, had a soul stirring within her. It had been choked by the false principles and ostentations that her mother had taught her. But Marian was not a stupid girl. Her wits had been sharpened by years of managing and deceit. She had the sense to see the difference between herself and the four sweet, unaffected “Automobile Girls,” and she knew the difference was in their favor.
Under her fashionable exterior a really simple heart beat in Marian’s bosom, and she was filled with a wild desire to shake off her mother’s despotic rule, and for once let her real self come to the surface. As she strolled moodily along beside Barbara she reflected bitterly that while others had been given all, she had received nothing.
She contrasted the hand to mouth existence that she and her mother led with the full, cheerful life of the “Automobile Girls,” and a wave of shame swept over her at the deceptions and subterfuges that were second nature to her mother, which she felt reasonably certain that no really honest person would practise. Her life was a sham and a mockery, and behind it was the ever present fear that her mother would some day overstep all bounds, and do something to bring the crushing weight of the law down upon them. There were so many things that Marian did not understand. Her mother never said more about her affairs than was absolutely necessary. She only knew that they were always poor, always struggling to appear to be that which they were not. She had been commanded to dissemble, to lie, to do without a murmur, whatever her mother asked of her, and her better self sometimes rose in a revolt against her mother, that was almost hatred.
As she walked gloomily along wrapped in her own bitter reflections, she sighed deeply. Bab who was walking with her glanced quickly at Marian, then with one of her swift impulses, she put out her hand and clasped that of the other girl.
“Are you unhappy, Marian?” she asked.
“No,” replied Marian. But her emotions got the better of her and she choked back her sobs with an angry gulp. Then feeling the pressure of Bab’s sympathetic hand she said brokenly, “I mean, yes. At least, I don’t know exactly what is the matter with me. I think I am homesick—homesick for the things I have never had, and never expect to have.”
“I’m sorry,” said Bab, still holding Marian’s hand, yet looking away, so she should not see Marian’s rebellious tears. “But why do you think you won’t have the things you want? If you keep on wishing for a thing the wish is sure to come true some day.”
Marian’s set face softened at these words. “Do you really think that?” she asked. “Do you suppose that things will ever be any different for me? Oh, if you only knew how I hate all this miserable pretense.”
“Why, Marian!” exclaimed Bab. “What is the matter? I had no idea you were so unhappy.”