Alpha Book

To-day she seemed suddenly willing
to be different. Her easy, graceful attitude, her soft voice full of
promised sympathy, above all the look in her strange eyes revealed a
side of her character which Orsino had not suspected and which affected
him in a way he could not have described.
Without hesitation he told her his story, from beginning to end, simply,
without comment and without any of the cutting phrases which came so
readily to his tongue on most occasions. She listened very thoughtfully
to the end.
"Those things are not misfortunes," she said. "But they may be the
beginnings of unhappiness. To be unhappy is worse than any misfortune.
What right has your father to laugh at you? Because he never needed to
do anything for himself, he thinks it absurd that his son should dislike
the lazy life that is prepared for him. It is not reasonable--it is not
kind!"
"Yet he means to be both, I suppose," said Orsino bitterly.
"Oh, of course! People always mean to be the soul of logic and the
paragon of charity! Especially where their own children are concerned.


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