What do you call success?" Olive inquired,
looking at her friend with a kind of salutary coldness--a suspension of
sympathy--with which Verena was now familiar (though she liked it no
better than at first), and which made approbation more gracious when
approbation came.
Verena reflected a moment, and then answered, smiling, but with
confidence: "Producing a pressure that shall be irresistible. Causing
certain laws to be repealed by Congress and by the State legislatures,
and others to be enacted." She repeated the words as if they had been
part of a catechism committed to memory, while Olive saw that this
mechanical tone was in the nature of a joke that she could not deny
herself; they had had that definition so often before, and Miss
Chancellor had had occasion so often to remind her what success _really_
was. Of course it was easy to prove to her now that Mr. Pardon's
glittering bait was a very different thing; was a mere trap and lure, a
bribe to vanity and impatience, a device for making her give herself
away--let alone fill his pockets while she did so. Olive was conscious
enough of the girl's want of continuity; she had seen before how she
could be passionately serious at times, and then perversely, even if
innocently, trivial--as just now, when she seemed to wish to convert one
of their most sacred formulas into a pleasantry.
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