“Some people are born with a realization of the futility of pleasure,” I went on, trying to voice Cecilia’s mood.
“I suppose it’s that,” she sighed. “When I was at school I thought of the world as a playground where I could amuse myself with the others.”
“And instead, you find that you’re only learning a different kind of lesson, and play is as uninteresting as ever?”
“Yes, it’s just like another kind of school, and the lessons harder to learn—and of less use when you’ve learned them!” There was a pathetic note in her voice.
“You’re very different from other girls, Miss Bennett,” I felt was an appropriate and comforting thing to say.
“I know I am, and it’s a great misfortune to be so,” she acknowledged, with becoming modesty.
“But it has its compensations.”
“It’s very lonely,” she said. “No one has ever understood all I think and feel. Mamma never has, nor the girls.”
“And since you’ve been out?”
“Since I’ve been out I met some one—once”—the once threw the time of meeting in the remote past—“some one I thought understood me—but I was disappointed.”