She would be perhaps more
than a little ashamed of her stage connections, should
she make any, until she should be at the very top--
and how get to the top when one is working under the
handicap of shame? Above all, how was this indulgently
and shelteredly reared lady to become a work-
ing woman, living a routine life, toiling away day in
and day out, with no let up, permitting no one and
nothing to break her routine? ``Really,'' thought
Agnes Belloc, ``she ought to have married that Baird
man--or stayed on with the nasty general. I wonder
why she didn't! That's the only thing that gives me
hope. There must be something in her--something
that don't appear--something she doesn't know about,
herself. What is it? Maybe it was only vanity and
vacillation. Again, I don't know.''
The difficulty Mrs. Belloc labored under in her
attempt to explore and map Mildred Gower was a difficulty
we all labor under in those same enterprises. We
cannot convince ourselves--in spite of experience
after experience--that a human character is never
consistent and homogeneous, is always conglomerate,
that there are no two traits, however naturally exclusive,
which cannot coexist in the same personality, that
circumstance is the dominating factor in human action
and brings forward as dominant characteristics now
one trait or set of traits, consistent or inconsistent, and
now another.
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