Apart from her supreme wish to fill Van Berg with regret, and awaken
in him something like respect, the thought of dragging on a wretched
existence through the indefinite years to come was intolerable. The
color had utterly faded out of life, and left it bald and repulsive
to the last degree.
Fashionable dissipation promised her nothing. She had often tasted
this, to the utmost limit of propriety, and was well aware that
the gay whirl had nothing new to offer, unless she plunged into
the mad excitement of a life which is as brief as it is vile. It
was to her credit that death seemed preferable to this. It was
largely due to her defective training and limited experience, that
a useful, innocent life, even though it promised to be devoid of
happiness, was so utterly repulsive that she was ready to throw it
away in impatient disgust.
As yet she was incapable of Jennie Burton's divine philosophy
of "pleasing not" herself. he who "gave his life for others" was
but a name at the pronunciation of which, in the Service, she was
accustomed to bow profoundly, but to whom, in her heart, she had
never bowed or offered a genuine prayer. Religion seemed to her a
sort of fashion which differed with the tastes of different people.
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