In a community
composed entirely of people like her parents and her
parents' friends she did not see how the magnificent things
one read about could ever have happened. She was sure that
if anything of the kind had occurred in her immediate circle
her mother would have consulted the family clergyman, and
her father perhaps even have rung up the police; and her
sense of humour compelled her to own that, in the given
conditions, these precautions might not have been
unjustified.
Little by little the conditions conquered her, and she
learned to regard the substance of life as a mere canvas for
the embroideries of poet and painter, and its little swept
and fenced and tended surface as its actual substance. It
was in the visioned region of action and emotion that her
fullest hours were spent; but it hardly occurred to her that
they might be translated into experience, or connected with
anything likely to happen to a young lady living in West
Fifty- fifth Street.
She perceived, indeed, that other girls, leading outwardly
the same life as herself, and seemingly unaware of her world
of hidden beauty, were yet possessed of some vital secret
which escaped her. There seemed to be a kind of freemasonry
between them; they were wider awake than she, more alert,
and surer of their wants if not of their opinions. She
supposed they were "cleverer", and accepted her inferiority
good-humouredly, half aware, within herself, of a reserve of
unused power which the others gave no sign of possessing.
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