Now I know you are disgusted, but its the truth. My old,
fashionable life seems to me like the tawdry scenes of a second-rate
theatre, where everything is for effect and nothing is real. I
have hosts of acquaintances, but I haven't any friends except Mr.
Eltinge."
"And Harold Van Berg," put in the artist, promptly.
"It's good of you to say that after such confessions," she continued,
with a shy glance. "I hope it wasn't out of politeness. Well,
I've waked up at last. I think you first startled me out of my
insufferable stupidity and silliness at the concert garden, and
I'm very much obliged to you for the remark you made to Cousin Ik
on that occasion."
"Yes, I remember," Van Berg groaned. "I waked you up as if I were
trying to put your shoulder out of joint. Well, I'm waking up
also."
"You have no idea what a perfect sham of a life I led," and she
told him frankly of her wasted school days and of her trip abroad,
for which she had no preparation of mind or character. "A butterfly
might have flown over the same ground and come back just as wise,"
she said. "But I have suddenly entered a new world of truth
and duty, and I am bewildered; I am anxious to fit myself for the
society of sensible, cultivated people, and I am discouraged by
the task before me.
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