Blair--straight through the apparent
mix-up. Off somewhere in Corsica a vine is putting down roots that there
may be wine in somebody's glass some day. The vine. The grape.
The wine."
"The vine. The grape. The wine."
"Don't you understand now a little better, Mrs. Blair, why this poor
little fermenting grape couldn't stay on the vine?"
"You've told me so little, dear."
"More than I've ever told a living soul. There's one thought I love to
carry about with me about Zoe. She was born out of captivity. No Chinese
shoes for her little mind or her little soul or body. I'm vague about it
now, just as I'm half crystallized about everything. But this time my
will to do is unlimited and unfaltering! Her whole life is going to be a
growth toward fulfillment of self. I want life to dawn upon her in great
truths, not in ugly shocks and realizations. She is a plant and I am her
trellis toward the light. Do you see? Do you? I may be as wrong as you
think I am, Mrs. Blair--terribly, irrevocably wrong--but I wouldn't take
her back there into that--that--sedentary fatness--I wouldn't--"
A musing sort of silence had fallen into a gloom that was thickening
into darkness.
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