"You are an old sentimental dreamer, Vick. You don't understand modern life. And you don't know women—they're lots more like men, too, than you think. They write such fool things about women. There are so many silly ideas about them that they don't dare to be themselves half the time, except a few like Margaret. She is honest with herself. Of course she loves Rob Falkner. He's in Panama now, but when he gets back I have no doubt Margaret will go and live with him. And she's got three children!"
"Isabelle, you aren't Margaret Pole or Cornelia Woodyard or any other woman but yourself. There are some things you can't do. I know you. There's the same twist in us both. You simply can't do this! You think you can, and you talk like this to me to make yourself think that you can…. But when it comes to the point, when you pack your bag, you know you will just unpack it again—and darn the stockings!"
"No, no!" Isabelle laughed in spite of herself; "I can't—I won't…. Why do I sniffle so like this? It's your fault, Vick; you always stir the pathetic note in me, you old fraud!"
She was crying now in long sobs, the tears falling to his hand.
"I know you because we are built the same foolish, idiotic way. There are many women who can play that game, who can live one way for ten or a dozen years, and then leave all that they have been—without ever looking back. But you are not one of them. I am afraid you and I are sentimentalists. It's a bad thing to be, Belle, but we can't help ourselves. We want the freedom of our feelings, but we want to keep a halo about them. You talked of cutting down these beeches. But you would never let one be touched, not one."
"I'll have 'em all cut down to-morrow," Isabelle murmured through her tears.
"Then you'll cry over them! No, Belle, it's no use going dead against your nature—the way you were made to run. You may like to soar, but you were meant to walk."
"You think there is nothing to me,—that I haven't a soul!"
"I know the soul."
Isabella flung her arms about her brother and clung there, breathing hard. The long night had worn her out with its incessant alternation of doubt and resolve, endlessly weaving through her brain.