Page:Emma Goldman - The Social Significance of the Modern Drama - 1914.djvu/270

 time she had, and how happy she was — and I was so miserably unhappy — and how she had everything she wanted and I had nothing, and. . . and. . . But this life made me unhappy, too, and so in desperation I came home; but I've grown too far away from it all, and now I'm going back. Don't you see, Jack, I'm not happy here. I thought if I could get home to the farm and the old simple life it would be all right, but it isn't. Everything jars on me, the roughness and the hard living and the coarse food — oh,. it seems ridiculous — but they make me physically ill. I always thought, if I could get away home to Knockmalgloss I could start fair again. . . . So I came home, and everything is the same, and everyone thinks that I'm as pure and innocent as when I went away, but. . . but. . . But, Jack, the dreadful thing is I want to go back. . . . I'm longing for that life, and its excitement and splendor and color.

In her misery and struggle a great faith sustains Mary and keeps her from ruin. It is the thought of her father, in whom she believes implicitly as her ideal of honesty, strength and incorruptibility. The shock is terrible when she learns that her father, even her father, has fallen a victim to the cruel struggle of life,—that her father himself set fire to the buildings.

 Mary. And I thought he was so simple, so innocent, so unspoiled! . . . Father, the simple, honest peasant, the only decent one of us. I cried all last night at the contrast! His unselfishness, his simplicity. . . . Why, we ' re all equally bad now — he and I — we both sell