Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/11

A Puritan Bohemia America to try my power. It will take all my time and strength and devotion"

"That's just the way," he interrupted, "that the modern young woman talks in story-books. You have read too many novels. She is always bent on a solitary and egoistic life, but in the end she always gives in."

"That is only in story-books," retorted Anne Bradford. "And I'm not a modern young woman. I am old-fashioned, and very much like my Puritan grandfather."

"I wish," said Howard Stanton, with a sudden flash of impertinence, "that you were a little bit more like your Puritan grandmother."

"You see," said Anne wistfully, "I've got to do it all myself. I am not a genius, and yet I think that if I was born for any purpose it was to paint pictures. Is trying to find one's best self-expression egoism?"

Her eyes were following the red-brown sail of a tiny boat, just disappearing in the fog. She would like to catch and keep that colour effect.