"I don’t suppose I shall ever marry," she said plaintively. "How can I?" She meant, and without doubt he understood: "How can I possibly meet a man who is worth marrying?" She thought with destructive disdain of every youth who had ever reacted to her charm. The company at the dance she had missed seemed contemptible. They were still dancing. What a collection of tenth-rate fellows!
She became gloomy, pessimistic, as she saw the totality of her existence and its prospects. The home at Putney had been a prison. She had escaped from it, but only to enter another prison. She saw no outlet. She was trapped on every side. She could not break out of the infernal circle of poverty and of the conventions. Not in ten years could she save enough to keep her for a year. She had to watch every penny. If she was mad enough to go to a West End theatre she had to consider the difference between a half-crown and a three-shilling pit. Thousands of men and women negligently fling themselves into expensive taxis, but a rise in bus fares or Tube fares would seriously unbalance Lilian’s budget. She passed most of her spare time in using a needle to set off her beauty, but what a farce was the interminable study and labour! She could not possibly aspire to even the best gloves; and as for the best stockings, or the second best!--the price of such a pair came to more than she could earn in a week. It was all absurd, tragic, pitiful. She had common-sense ample enough to see that her beauty was futile, her ambitions baseless, and her prospects nil. If she had been a vicious girl, she might have broken through the dreadful ring into splendours which she glimpsed and needed. But she was not vicious.
"Pooh!" exclaimed Mr. Grig impatiently. "You could marry anybody you liked if you put your mind to it."
And he spoke so scornfully of her lack of faith, so persuasively, so inspiringly, that she had an amazing and beautiful vision of herself worshipped, respected, alluring, seductive, arousing passion, reciprocating passion, kind, benevolent, eternally young, eternally lovely, eternally exercising for the balm and solace of mankind and a man the functions for which she was created and endowed--in a word, fulfilling herself. And for the moment, in the ecstasy of resolution to achieve the impossible, she was superb and magnificent and the finest thing that a man could ever hope to witness.