- No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.
- The only other people in the dining room were a family party, a mother and father with a small boy and girl, and they talked to one another softly and gently, and once the little girl turned and regarded Eleanor with frank curiosity and, after a minute, smiled. The lights from the stream below touched the ceiling and the polished tables and glanced along the little girl's curls, and the little girl's mother said, "She wants her cup of stars."
- Eleanor looked up, surprised; the little girl was sliding back in her chair, sullenly refusing her milk, while her father frowned and her brother giggled and her mother said calmly, "She wants her cup of stars."
- Indeed yes, Eleanor thought; indeed, so do I; a cup of stars, of course.
- "Her little cup," the mother was explaining, smiling apologetically at the waitress, who was thunderstruck at the thought that the mill's good country milk was not rich enough for the little girl. "It has stars in the bottom, and she always drinks her milk from it at home. She calls it her cup of stars because she can see the stars while she drinks her milk." The waitress nodded, unconvinced, and the mother told the little girl, "You'll have your milk from your cup of stars tonight when we get home. But just for now, just to be a very good little girl, will you take a little milk from this glass?"
- Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don't do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl.
- "You're spoiling her," the father said. "She ought not to be allowed these whims."
- "Just this once," the mother said. She put down the glass of milk and touched the little girl gently on the hand. "Eat your ice cream," she said.
- "I am more inclined to believe that she was one of those tenacious, unclever young women who can hold on desperately to what they believe is their own but cannot withstand, mentally, a constant nagging persecution; she had certainly no weapons to fight back against the younger sister's campaign of hatred..."
- "Mrs. Dudley had better learn her place," he said. "I will nail these doors open if I have to." He turned down the passageway to their little parlor and sent the door swinging open with a crash. "Losing my temper will not help," he said, and gave the door a vicious kick.
- Eleanor did not sleep during the afternoon, although she would have liked to; instead, she lay on Theodora's bed in the green room and watched Theodora do her nails, chatting lazily, unwilling to let herself perceive that she had followed Theodora into the green room because she had not dared to be alone.
- "I love decorating myself," Theodora said, regarding her hand affectionately. "I'd like to paint myself all over."
- Eleanor moved comfortably. "Gold paint," she suggested, hardly thinking. With her eyes almost closed she could see Theodora only as a mass of color sitting on the floor.
- "Nail polish and perfume and bath salts," Theodora said, as one telling the cities of the Nile. "Mascara. You don't think half enough of such things, Eleanor."
- Eleanor laughed and closed her eyes altogether. "No time," she said.
- "Well," Theodora said with determination, "by the time I'm through with you, you will be a different person; I dislike being with women of no color." She laughed to show that she was teasing, and then went on, "I think I will put red polish on your toes."
- Eleanor laughed too and held out her bare foot. After a minute, nearly asleep, she felt the odd cold little touch of the brush on her toes, and shivered.
- "Surely a famous courtesan like yourself is accustomed to the ministrations of handmaidens," Theodora said. "Your feet are dirty."
- Shocked, Eleanor sat up and looked; her feet /were/ dirty, and her nails were painted bright red. "It's /horrible/," she said to Theodora, "it's /wicked/," wanting to cry. Then, helplessly, she began to laugh at the look on Theodora's face. "I'll go and wash my feet."
- "Golly." Theodora sat on the floor beside the bed, staring. "Look," she said. "My feet are dirty, too, baby, honest. /Look/."
- "Anyway," Eleanor said, "I hate having things done to me."
- "You're about as crazy as anyone /I/ ever saw," Theodora said cheerfully.
- "I don't like to feel helpless," Eleanor said. "My mother--"
- "Your mother would have been delighted to see you with your toenails painted red," Theodora said. "They look nice."
- Eleanor looked at her feet again. "It's wicked," she said inadequately. "I mean--on /my/ feet. It makes me feel like I look a fool."
- "You've got foolishness and wickedness somehow mixed up."
- Fear and guilt are sisters; Theodora caught her on the lawn.
- A person angry, or laughing, or terrified, or jealous, will go stubbornly on into extremes of behavior impossible at another time...
sep 6 2011 ∞
mar 30 2012 +