I live absolutely for myself. There
isn't a person except Flora who gets anything of service or
self-sacrifice out of me. I came down here because she wanted me, but
I hated to come. The modern theory is that unselfishness weakens. And
the modern psychologist would tell you that little Dorrit was all
wrong. She gave herself for others--and it didn't pay. But does the
other thing pay?"

"Selfishness?"

"Yes. I'm selfish, and Oscar is, and Flora, and George Dalton, and
most of the people we know. And we are all bored to death. If being
unselfish is interesting, why not let us be unselfish?" Her lively
glance seemed to challenge him, and they laughed together.

"I know what you mean."

"Of course you do. Everybody does who _thinks_."

"And so you are going to wait for the next plane to do the things that
you want to do?"

"Yes."

"But why--wait?"

"How can I break away? I am tied into knots with the people whom I
have always known; and I shall keep on doing the things I have always
done, just as I shall keep on wearing pale purples and letting my skin
get burned, so that I may seem distinctive."

It came to him with something of a shock that she did these things with
intention. That the charms which seemed to belong to her were
carefully planned.

Yet how could he tell if what she said was true, when her eyes laughed?

"I shall get all I can out of being here. Mary Flippin is going to let
me help her make butter, and Mrs. Flippin will teach me to make
corn-bread, and some day I am going fishing with the Judge and Mr.
Flippin and learn to fry eggs out-of-doors----"

"So those are the things you like?"

She nodded. "I think I do. George Dalton says it is only because I
crave a change. But it isn't that. And I haven't told him the way I
feel about it--the Dickens way--as I have told you."

He was glad that she had not talked to Dalton as she had talked to him.

"I wonder," he said slowly, "why you couldn't shake yourself free from
the life which binds you?"

"I'm not strong enough. I'm like the drug-fiend, who doesn't want his
drug, but can't give it up."

"Perhaps you need--help. There are doctors of everything, you know, in
these days."

"None that can cure me of the habit of frivolity--of the claims of
custom----"

"If a man takes a drug, he is cured, by substituting something else for
a while until he learns to do without it."

"What would you substitute for--my drug?"