HE sisters were up-stairs in the cool, old-fashioned chamber leisurely making ready for bed. Amelia stood at the bureau, brushing her shining hair by the light of a dim lamp; Marie sat in a low arm-chair, unlacing her boots and talking vehemently.
"I do despise that sort of talk," she cried. "'Melie, if you 're sensible and prudent and cautious, as they want you to be, you 'll simply miss everything. Being sensible means not wanting anything much, and being prudent means not trying to get what you want, and being cautious means not taking what you want even when you can get it. If you like him, 'Melie, and don't mind getting married, go ahead and take him."
"It is n't just what I want at this moment, Marie; it's a question of my whole future life."
"Darn the future!" cried Marie. "I'm not going to waste any of these years—these good years. After I'm thirty, I sha' n't care what happens. I'm going to spend now, and pay for it when I'm old."
It was a plan that did not appeal to the sleek and pretty Amelia, thrifty by nature, liking to savor life slowly, who was not greedy to swallow it whole at one meal, but who wanted rather to store it up on her neat little shelves and to use it, spread thin, through years and years. She was a gourmet, perhaps, but not a glutton, like the lean, fierce Marie. There were times, though, when she envied Marie her feast.
"I'm not in a hurry," she said. "I'm only nineteen; there's lots of time ahead of me. I'm going to give myself the rest of this summer to make up my mind."
"But are n't you afraid he 'll go away or die—or something?" asked Marie. "I should be. If I liked a man, I'd marry him instantly."
"I'm not afraid of his going away," Amelia answered. "Anyway, if he wants to go, let him."
"You 're really not a bit in love with him!" said Marie, reproachfully.
"I could be, if I wanted; but I'm not going to be until I'm sure I want to be."
"Well!" said Marie. "When I fall in love— Gosh!"
She leaned her head back against her clasped hands and stared up at the ceiling. A thin, dark young creature of eighteen, not pretty, but in her awkward immaturity giving promise of something rare to come; a sulky face with childish mouth and puzzled eyes, the face of an inquirer, an adventurer, that mingling of carelessness and earnestness that makes a Drake, a Parsifal, a Columbus.
"I don't believe you ever will fall in love," said Amelia. "You'd expect so much of a man that you could n't help being angry with him all the time."
"Perhaps," said Marie, with a sigh. "It's very likely I 'll never be suited. Or maybe no one will ever like me. I 've never had any beaus, have I, 'Melie?"
"No," Amelia answered, not without a tinge of complacency because of the very many she had had. "Still, you 're young yet; there's no hurry."
Who could convince Marie of that, though—Marie in such a panting hurry to live, to be born!
"Oh, Lord!" she sighed, beginning to braid her heavy, black hair. "No one seems to understand!"
"I try," said Amelia; "but we 're very different, are n't we?"
Neither of them could see, though, how immeasurable the difference even at that instant, at that time in life when they were most alike, still bearing the impress of their identical training.
They had, definitely enough, "chosen" their futures, confident that what they had selected would be delivered. Amelia looked for a few years more of very agreeable maidenhood, and after that the extravagant and indulgent admiration of a husband with a good income. She pictured lovely clothes, a charming home of her own, a sort of perpetual holiday, which she would deserve by being good and pretty. There was already a promising applicant upon whom she was deliberating during this annual summer visit to their great-aunt's farm. She was glad of the opportunity for calm, untroubled meditation. Whereas to Marie the visit was, as usual, a painful infliction.
"I thought I could go on studying here," she told Amelia, "but I can't. It's too quiet, and I have too much time."
"The rest will do you good," Amelia had answered. She was never able to take Marie's studies very seriously, because the object of them changed so frequently and rapidly. Marie's ambition was simply to be illustrious. She was a student in a woman's college, a headstrong, ridiculous student who pounced greedily on half a dozen unrelated courses, who wanted to learn everything in the world and all at once, economics and church history and Romance languages, it did n't matter.