Page:Glimpses of the Moon (Wharton 1922).djvu/170

160 "A question of time? If you doubt it, I'd like to see you try, for a while, in those two rooms without a servant; and then let me hear from you. Why, my dear, it's only a question of time in a palace, with a steam yacht lying off the door-step, and a flock of motors in the garage; look around you and see. And did you ever imagine that you and Nick, of all people, were going to escape the common doom, and survive like Mr. and Mrs. Tithonus, while all about you the eternal passions were crumbling to pieces, and your native Divorce-states piling up their revenues?"

She sat with bent head, the weight of the long years to come pressing like a leaden load on her shoulders.

"But I'm so young life's so long. What does last, then?"

"Ah, you're too young to believe me, if I were to tell you; though you're intelligent enough to understand."

"What does, then?"

"Why, the hold of the things we all think we could do without. Habits—they outstand the Pyramids. Comforts, luxuries, the atmosphere of ease above all, the power to get away from dulness and monotony, from constraints and uglinesses. You chose that power, instinctively, before you were even grown up; and so did Nick. And the only difference between you is that he's had the sense to see sooner than you that those are the things that last, the prime necessities."