do not mock at my attempts to discover how the other half lives.
Give me credit for some sort of groping sincerity in that at
least. I would like to help them. I would like to be some use in
the world. Is it my fault I don't know how? I would like to be
sincere, to touch life somewhere. [With weary bitterness.] But I'm
afraid I have neither the vitality nor integrity. All that was
burnt out in our stock before I was born. Grandfather's blast
furnaces, flaming to the sky, melting steel, making millions--then
father keeping those home fires burning, making more millions--and
little me at the tail-end of it all. I'm a waste product in the
Bessemer process--like the millions. Or rather, I inherit the
acquired trait of the by-product, wealth, but none of the energy,
none of the strength of the steel that made it. I am sired by gold
and darned by it, as they say at the race track--damned in more
ways than one, [She laughs mirthlessly].

AUNT--[Unimpressed--superciliously.] You seem to be going in for
sincerity to-day. It isn't becoming to you, really--except as an
obvious pose. Be as artificial as you are, I advise. There's a
sort of sincerity in that, you know. And, after all, you must
confess you like that better.

MILDRED--[Again affected and bored.] Yes, I suppose I do. Pardon
me for my outburst. When a leopard complains of its spots, it must
sound rather grotesque. [In a mocking tone.] Purr, little leopard.
Purr, scratch, tear, kill, gorge yourself and be happy--only stay
in the jungle where your spots are camouflage. In a cage they make
you conspicuous.

AUNT--I don't know what you are talking about.