“Oh, I despise him. But you can’t say the things you feel.”
“You’d be bigger and truer if you did. Some day I’ll break out and flay you and your friends alive.”
“But, Carley, you’re my friend and you’re just exactly like we are. Or you were, quite recently.”
“Of course, I’m your friend. I’ve always loved you, Eleanor,” went on Carley, earnestly. “I’m as deep in this—this damned stagnant muck as you, or anyone. But I’m no longer blind. There’s something terribly wrong with us women, and it’s not what Morrison hinted.”
“Carley, the only thing wrong with you is that you jilted poor Glenn—and are breaking your heart over him still.”
“Don’t—don’t!” cried Carley, shrinking. “God knows that is true. But there’s more wrong with me than a blighted love affair.”
“Yes, you mean the modern feminine unrest?”
“Eleanor, I positively hate that phrase ‘modern feminine unrest!’ It smacks of ultra—ultra—Oh! I don’t know what. That phrase ought to be translated by a Western acquaintance of mine—one Haze Ruff. I’d not like to hurt your sensitive feelings with what he’d say. But this unrest means speed-mad, excitement-mad, fad-mad, dress-mad, or I should say undress-mad, culture-mad, and Heaven only knows what else. The women of our set are idle, luxurious, selfish, pleasure-craving, lazy, useless, work-and-children shirking, absolutely no good.”
“Well, if we are, who’s to blame?” rejoined Eleanor, spiritedly. “Now, Carley Burch, you listen to me. I think the twentieth-century girl in America is the most wonderful female creation of all the ages of the universe. I admit it. That is why we are a prey to the evils attending greatness. Listen. Here is a crying sin—an infernal paradox. Take this twentieth-century girl, this American girl who is the finest creation of the ages. A young and healthy girl, the most perfect type of culture possible to the freest and greatest city on earth—New York! She holds absolutely an unreal, untrue position in the scheme of existence. Surrounded by parents, relatives, friends, suitors, and instructive schools of every kind, colleges, institutions, is she really happy, is she really living?”
“Eleanor,” interrupted Carley, earnestly, “she is not.... And I’ve been trying to tell you why.”