'Picture it!'Josephine put up her lip, and then she laughed with seeming amusement. 'Did you ever see two chickens pulling at the two ends of a worm? That's about it. John pulled one way, and I pulled the other. Pleasant picture, isn't it? But that sort of thing can't last forever.'
'No,' said Wych Hazel looking suddenly up,'but this does. A life ignored by all respectable people; a name spurned with the foot and scorned on the tongue. A dark spot, which only forgetfulness can hide,and which nobody ever forgets! That other sort of thing does end, Josephine, with death, or with patient endeavour; but this thing, never!'
'You talk'said Josephine pouting. Then she suddenly broke out, with her eyes full upon Hazel's face. 'Don't you think, if you had never been happy in your life, you would like to try just for a little how it feels?'
'Yes,' said Wych Hazel, 'but you are going to try misery;and not for a little.'
'I am not trying misery here,' said the girl with a shrug of her shoulders. 'I tell you, it's jolly. How did you know where to find me?'
'There is a fair view, quite often, from the place where one step towards it plunges you down thousands of feet. When you are left alone in Lisbonand dare not come home to America_then_ you will learn what misery is.'
Josephine started a little, and for once her colour stirred. Words did not come readily. When they came, they were a somewhat haughty enquiry what Hazel meant?
'Just what I say,' Hazel answered quietly.
'Did you come here to say it?'
'Yes.'