Miss Parker looked at her curiously.
“I wonder if you really love him! You always look at your marriage from the personal point of view, as a kind of happy solution to a difficult problem. You don’t seem to see him,” she continued, in a far-away tone. “And I believe something always tells a woman when she is justified in taking her chances. Of course she may have a hard time, but if she is the right sort, and that something comes into her heart, why! all the after tragedies don’t matter. For you everything seems serene, and yet you haven’t that something, I feel. You don’t really love him now.”
“How dare you say that!” Miss Anthon exclaimed harshly.
Molly Parker looked as if she dared say anything. To be obliged to give her reasons was another matter.
“Oh! you take life, marriage, your career—‘broadly,’ as you say, like a thorough course in self-development. Perhaps you will carry it through that way. But if I hadn’t that something in my heart which would make me go barefoot with a man and have a good time, I would run away. If I were married to a man without that something, I should stick a hat-pin into him, or make his life a little hell, no matter how good he was. But you may be different. ‘Love with you may be an affair of growth.’” Her voice dwelt mockingly on this last sentence. Miss Anthon drew herself up proudly, with the air of having been guilty of familiarities with an inferior. They drove on some minutes in silence. Then Miss Anthon said sombrely—
“There is this life, and I will make the most of it.”
They were crossing the Place de la Concorde in the early lamp-light of a November evening. The splendid lines of light in every direction flashed on the slippery, damp pavements; carriages were dashing from the Rue de Rivoli across the Place into the broad avenue leading to the dominant arch. The individual hum of Paris, that Paris she had so much loved and wondered at, the Paris that had aroused slumbering instincts and had mocked at her, surged through her brain:—yes, there was much to grasp in this life!
“And there are other things,” Miss Parker murmured, “which we cannot manage always. We can only dream and hope, for after all life may be too great for you and break you.”