Well, don't be afraid of hurting my feelings. Only, you know, between
us, as between more doubtful people, the door must be either open or
shut. I fancy you take cold easily; perhaps you had better shut the
door."
"Not for worlds," Alicia said, with promptitude. Then she added rather
cleverly, "That would be my spoiling my one view of life."
Hilda smiled. "Isn't there any life where you live?" She glanced round
her, at the tapestried elegance of the room, with sudden indifference.
"After all," she said, "I don't know what I am doing here, in your
affairs. As the world swings no one could be more remote from them or
you. I belong to its winds and its highways--how have you brought me
here, a tramp-actress, to your drawing-room?"
Alicia laid a detaining hand upon Miss Howe's skirt. "Don't go away,"
she said. Hilda sat at the other end of the sofa; there was hardly a
foot between them. She went on with a curious excitement.
"My kind of life is so primitive, so simple; it is one pure pulse, you
don't know. One only asks the things that minister--one goes and finds
and takes them; one's feet in the straw, one's head under any roof. What
difference does it make? The only thing that counts, that rules, is the
chance of seeing something else, feeling something more, doing something
better.
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