"To _see_ something!" says her aunt, "why it was only last Sunday I took you to Westminster Abbey, where you saw the grandest edifice in all the world."
"Most interesting place," says the professor, _sotto voce_, with a wild but mad hope of smoothing matters down for Perpetua's sake.
If it _was_ for Perpetua's sake, she proves herself singularly ungrateful. She turns upon him a small vivid face, alight with indignation.
"You support her," cries she. "_You!_ Well, I shall tell you! I"--defiantly--"I don't want to go to churches at all. I want to go to _theatres_! There!"
There is an awful silence. Miss Majendie's face is a picture! If the girl had said she wanted to go to the devil instead of to the theatre, she could hardly have looked more horrified. She takes a step forward, closer to Perpetua.
"Go to your room! And pray--_pray_ for a purer mind!" says she. "This is hereditary, all this! Only prayer can cast it out. And remember, this is the last word upon this subject. As long as you are under _my_ roof you shall never go to a sinful place of amusement. I forbid you ever to speak of theatres again."
"I shall not be forbidden!" says Perpetua. She confronts her aunt with flaming eyes and crimson cheeks. "I _do_ want to go to the theatre, and to balls, and dances, and _everything_. I"--passionately, and with a most cruel, despairing longing in her young voice, "want to dance, to laugh, to sing, to amuse myself--to be the gayest thing in all the world!"
She stops as if exhausted, surprised perhaps at her own daring, and there is silence for a moment, a _little_ moment, and then Miss Majendie looks at her.
"'The gayest thing in all the world:' _and your father only four months dead_!" says she, slowly, remorselessly.
All in a moment, as it were, the little crimson angry face grows white--white as death itself. The professor, shocked beyond words, stands staring, and marking the sad changes in it. Perpetua is trembling from head to foot. A frightened look has come into her beautiful eyes--her breath comes quickly. She is as a thing at bay--hopeless, horrified. Her lips part as if she would say something. But no words come. She casts one anguished glance at the professor, and rushes from the room.