' Oh, Charlie, you always confuse things,' she said. ' You do not mean the quest of the impossible, but the quest of the improbable. The quest of the improbable is the secret of our striving. Anyone can grasp the impossible; it is merely an affair of the imagination. I can amuse myself by planning out what my life would be if I were a man. What I cannot do is to plan out for myself a successful career as a woman.'
' Surely you have plans enough,' said Mrs. Brancepeth.
' No, no plans,' said Sybil—' desires merely. I have lots of desires. One is control of the outside edge; that is unrealized. Dear Charlie, you look so well this evening; that is another of my plans. It is getting on.'
' He gained two pounds last week,' said his mother.
' How nice! I lost a hundred, because I speculated on the Stock Exchange. It sounds rather grand to speculate, but it wasn't at all grand. What happened was that a pleasant young gentleman here, whose name I don't know, said two days ago to me, “ Buy East Rands.” I bought a hundred. They went down a point. I sold. But I bought many emotions with my hundred pounds. One was that one could get interested in anything, whether one knew what it was or not, as long as one put money into it. And if money interests you, surely anything else will.'
This, too—so Mrs. Brancepeth interpreted it—was a successful red herring drawn across the path. Charlie appeared equally interested.
' Ah, you are wrong there, Sybil,' he said. ' Money in excelsis must be the most interesting thing in the world; there is nothing it cannot do.'
' Oh, it can do everything that is not worth doing,' interrupted Sybil; ' I grant that.'
' And most things that are,' he continued. ' For, except content, which it will not bring you, there is nothing which is not in its sphere.'
