Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/21

eyes, breath-beaten and storm-shaken, a fighter of the night and of the gale, for the love of storms and for the love of fighting, that was I. I seem to myself to have been a creature of the dark and the weather, sprung of them, as the wet flowers were sprung of the earth, and the falling torrents were born of the clouds. I seem to myself to have been a thousandfold more myself out there. The drawing-room girl in low dresses and trains, receiving beside her father, doing the proper thing, saying what everybody says,—even the girl who likes Strauss waltzes, and dances once in a while till morning,—looked out of the window at this other girl, like distant relatives. The girl in the garden disowned them, and did n't care a raindrop what they thought of her. Oh, I did n't care what anybody thought of me! What 's the sense in being alive if you can't hurl away other people's thoughts and respect your own? I suppose, if it comes to that, it 's well to have your thoughts respectable. Truly, I don't think mine have ever been disreputable. Come, Marna Trent! Out with it! Have they? No no. I really don't think they have. I can't answer for what they might be, if it stormed hard enough, and I 'd been to too many receptions, and I could n't get into rubber boots and a waterproof and run about gardens.