The Visioning by Susan Glaspell
page 53 of 449 (11%)
page 53 of 449 (11%)
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satisfying. I have more than once felt it was cheating me. I'm not
getting enough--just because I don't know. Loving a thing because you don't know it isn't a very high way of loving it, is it? I believe I could know it and still love it--love it, indeed, the more truly. No, you don't think so; but I want to try." She paused, thinking; then saw it and spoke it strongly. "I've never done anything real. I've never done anything that counted. That's why I'm an outsider. If making a place for you here is going to make one for me there--on the inside, I mean--you're not going to refuse to take me in, are you?" Something seemed to leap up in the girl's eyes, but to crouch back, afraid. "What do you know about me?" she whispered. "Not much. Only that you've met things I never had to meet, met them much better, doubtless, than I should have met them. Only that you've fought in the real, while I've flitted around here on the playground." Katie's eyes contracted to keenness. "And I wonder if there isn't more dignity in fighting--yes, and losing--in the real, than just sitting around where you get nothing more unpleasant than the faint roar of the guns. To lose fighting--or not to fight! Why certainly there can be no question about it. What do I know about you?" she came back to it. "Only that you seemed just shot into my life, strangely disturbing it, ruffling it so queerly. It's too ruffled now to settle down without--more ruffling. So you're not going away leaving it in any such distressing state, are you?" she concluded with a smile which lighted her face with a fine seriousness. She made a last stand. "But you don't know. You don't understand." |
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