ion in despising that idealism and thinking
of hard names to call it.

"... though of course you showed your intelligence by _not_ really
caring to," went on Mrs. Marshall-Smith; "it would have meant a
crippled life for both of you. Felix hasn't a cent more than he needs
for himself. If he was going to marry at all, he was forced to marry
carefully. Indeed, it has occurred to me that he may have thrown
himself into this, because he was in danger of losing his head over
you, and knew how fatal it would be. For you, you lovely thing of
great possibilities, you need a rich soil for _your_ roots, too, if
you're to bloom out as you ought to."

Sylvia, receiving this into a sore and raw consciousness, said to
herself with an embittered instinct for cynicism that she had never
heard more euphonious periphrases for selling yourself for money. For
that was what it came down to, she had told herself fiercely a great
many times during the night. Felix had sold himself for money as
outright as ever a woman of the streets had done.

Mrs. Marshall-Smith, continuing steadily to talk (on the theory that
talking prevents too great concentration of thought), and making the
round of all the possible things to say, chanced at this moment upon
a qualification to this theory of Morrison's conduct which for an
instant caught Sylvia's attention, "--and then there's always the
possibility that even if you _had_ cared to--Molly might have been
too much for you, for both of you. She always has had just what she
wanted--and people who have, get the habit. I don't know if you've
noticed it, in the little you've seen of her, but it's very apparent
to me, knowing her from childhood up as I have, that there's a slight
coarseness of grain in Molly, when it's a question of getting what she
wants. I don't mean she's exactly horrid. Molly's a dear in her way,
and I'm very fond of her, of course. If she can get what she wants
_without_ walking over anybody's prostrate body, she'll go round.
But there's a directness, a brilliant lack of fine shades in Molly's
grab.... It makes one remember that her Montgomery grandfather had
firmness of purpose enough to raise himself from an ordinary Illinois
farmer to arbiter of the wheat pit. Such impossible old aunts--such
cousins--occasionally crop up still from the Montgomery connection.
But all with the same crude force. It's almost impossible for a
temperament like Felix's to contend with a nature like that."