'What does she really wish for?' inquired Snowdon, when there had
been a short silence.
'She doesn't know, poor girl! Everything in the life she has been
living is hateful to her--everything since she left school. She
can't rest in the position to which she was born; she aims at an
impossible change of circumstances. It comes from her father; she
can't help rebelling against what seem to her unjust restraints. But
what's to come of it? She may perhaps get a place in a large
restaurant--and what does that mean?'
He broke off, but in a moment resumed even more passionately:
'What a vile, cursed world this is, where you may see men and women
perish before your eyes, and no more chance of saving them than if
they were going down in mid-ocean! She's only a child--only just
seventeen--and already she's gone through a lifetime of miseries.
And I, like a fool, I've often been angry with her; I was angry
yesterday. How can she help her nature? How can we any of us help
what we're driven to in a world like this? Clara isn't made to be
one of those who slave to keep themselves alive. Just a chance of
birth! Suppose she'd been the daughter of a rich man; then
everything we now call a fault in her would either have been of no
account or actually a virtue.
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