Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/202

 all the king's horses and all the king's men can't do a thing for you."

She turned and as she gazed to the south down the long, dark stretch of the lake toward Chicago, she was caught by the mighty, yellow night aurora spread across the southern sky over the city; it always is there, of course, but upon certain nights it glows brighter and seems so tremendous that you think it can not be the mere irradiation of millions of man-kindled lights; it appears too fundamental, too spontaneous and uncompelled. This was such a night, and the sight of it struck Marjorie almost with awe for the city which cast this aura.

"One family isn't very much, is it?" she said slowly, "when you see that. But we can't help being awfully important to ourselves."

"You're important to everybody," Gregg assented quickly.

"Yes, maybe. Our trouble means another broken family; and the family, they say, is the unit of civilization. Break up families and where would any one be? Where would that be?" She stared at the glow. Gregg hesitated and then decided to object.

"That's mostly smashed families, Marjorie; at least, families that aren't what they used to be. There I go; and whenever anybody else carries on like that, I mention the remark they say Lincoln made; or maybe it was George Washington—or George Cohan. Anyway, it was in answer to the lamentation that "I'm afraid Bill Brown ain't the man he used to be!" "No," said George, "and I'm afraid he never was." I guess that if families aren't now what they used to be, the chief trouble is that they never were. We're all working out something there, Marjorie, I guess."