"She doesn't feel obliged to me at all," said Tom. "She gives a good as she gets."
"No better?"
"What do you mean?"
"Pardon me, Tom; but you have been frank with me. By your own account, she will get very little."
"All she wants. I'll give her a local habitation and a name."
"I am sure you are unjust."
"Not at all. That is all half the girls want; all they try for. She's very content. O, I'm very good to her when we are together; and I mean to be. You needn't look at me," said Tom, trying to laugh. "Three-quarters of all the marriages that are made are on the same pattern. Why, Phil, what do the men and women of this world live for? What's the purpose in all I've been doing since I left college? What's the good of floating round in the world as I have been doing all summer and winter here this year? and at home it is different only in the manner of it. People live for nothing, and don't enjoy life. I don't know at this minute a single man or woman, of our sort, you know, that enjoys life; except that one. And she isn't our sort. She has no money, and no society, and no Europe to wander round in! O, they would say they enjoy life; but their way shows they don't."
"Enjoyment is not the first thing," Philip said thoughtfully.
"O, isn't it! It's what we're all after, anyhow; you'll allow that."
"Perhaps that is the way we miss it."