Page:Glimpses of the Moon (Wharton 1922).djvu/299

Rh do?" she questioned, with a sudden accent of helplessness.

He looked at her as helplessly. He could not say: "Ask yourself—ask your parents." Her next word would sweep away such frail hypocrisies. Her "What shall I do?" meant "What are you going to do?" and he knew it, and knew that she knew it.

"I'm a bad person to give any one matrimonial advice," he began, with a strained smile; "but I had such a different vision for you."

"What kind of a vision?" She was merciless.

"Merely what people call happiness, dear."

People call'—you see you don't believe in it yourself! Well, neither do I--in that form, at any rate."

He considered. "I believe in trying for it—even if the trying's the best of it."

"Well, I've tried, and failed. And I'm twenty-two, and I never was young. I suppose I haven't enough imagination." She drew a deep breath. "Now I want something different." She appeared to search for the word. "I want to be—prominent," she declared.

"Prominent?"

She reddened swarthily. "Oh, you smile—you think it's ridiculous: it doesn't seem worth while to you. That's because you've always had all those things. But I haven't. I know what father pushed up from, and I want to push up as high