But there's
something else. How much of your character, how much of all your life to
come is decided for you during the first ten or fifteen years of your
life--decided for you, mind, not by you? Upon my soul, I think the whole
of it. You don't agree? Well, it's an open question. I believe that at
the age of fifteen the lines along which you will move are already drawn,
your character formed, your conduct for the future a settled thing."
To that Sylvia gave no assent. But she did not disagree. She only looked
at her father with a questioning and a troubled face. If it were so, she
asked, why had she hated from the first the circle in which her mother
and herself had moved. And the answer--or at all events _an_ answer--came
as she put the question to herself. She had lived amongst her dreams. She
was in doubt.
"Well, hear something of my boyhood, Sylvia!" cried her father, and for
the first time his voice became embittered. "I was brought up by a
respectable father. Yes, respectable," he said, with a sneer. "Everything
about us was respectable. We lived in a respectable house in a
respectable neighborhood, and twice every Sunday we went to church and
listened to a respectable clergyman. But!--Well, here's a chapter out of
the inside. I would go to bed and read in bed by a candle. Not a very
heinous offence, but contrary to the rule of the house.
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