And when you've wobbled way off maybe it'll give you
something to steer back by."
Susan sat on there, deep in the deepest of those brown studies
that had been characteristic of her from early childhood.
Often--perhaps most often--abstraction means only mental
fogginess. But Susan happened to be of those who can
concentrate--can think things out. And that afternoon, oblivious
of the beauty around her, even unconscious of where she was, she
studied the world of reality--that world whose existence, even
the part of it lying within ourselves, we all try to ignore or
to evade or to deny, and get soundly punished for our folly.
Taking advantage of the floods of light Mabel Connemora had let
in upon her--full light where there had been a dimness that was
equal to darkness--she drew from the closets of memory and
examined all the incidents of her life--all that were typical or
for other reasons important. One who comes for the first time
into new surroundings sees more, learns more about them in a
brief period than has been seen and known by those who have
lived there always. After a few hours of recalling and
reconstructing Susan Lenox understood Sutherland probably better
than she would have understood it had she lived a long eventless
life there. And is not every Sutherland the world in miniature?
She also understood her own position--why the world of
respectability had cast her out as soon as she emerged from
childhood--why she could not have hoped for the lot to which
other girls looked forward--why she belonged with the outcasts,
in a world apart--and must live her life there.
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