Penelope will cross the ocean. Her husband will die very soon. There will be war soon. She will go to the war and honors will be conferred upon her on the battlefields. Then she will go down to horror—to terror!
How that prophecy of Seraphine haunts me! All of it has come true except the very last. Horror! Terror! These two are ever before me. These two already encompass me. These two will presently overwhelm me unless—unless—I don't know what.
Seraphine is in New York, I have meant to go to see her, but—I am afraid, I am afraid of what she will tell me!
New York, Saturday.
I must set down here—to ease my tortured brain—some of the things that have happened to me since I last wrote in this book, my confessional.
When I got back to town I found an invitation to go to a Bohemian ball, and I decided to accept. Vive la joie! So I put on a white dress and went with Roberta Vallis and that ridiculous poet Kendall Brown. It was the first time I had danced since my husband died and I enjoyed it.
Such a ball! They called it a Pagan Revel and it was! Egyptian costumes and a Russian orchestra. Some of the Egyptian slave maidens were dressed mostly in brown paint. Kendall says he helped dress them at the Liberal Club. Good heavens! Kendall's pose of lily white virtue amuses me. He went as a cave man with a leopard skin over his shoulders, and I danced with him two or three times. His talk reminds me of Julian. How well I know the methods of these sentimental pirates! What infinite patience and adroitness they use in leading the talk towards dangerous ground! How seriously they begin! With what sincerity and ingenuous frankness they proceed, and all the time they know exactly what they are doing, exactly what effects they are producing in a woman.
Kendall spoke of the modern dance in a detached, intellectual way. He dwelt on one particular development in the fox trot—had I noticed it?—there! that naval officer and the languishing blonde were doing it now—which seemed to him unæsthetic. It might be harmful in some cases, say to a Class A woman. Being curious, I asked what he meant by a “Class A” woman and this gave Kendall his opportunity to discourse on fundamental differences that exist among women, so he declares. I wish I knew if what he says is true. He assures me he has it on the authority of a Chicago specialist, but I never put much dependence on anything that Kendall Brown says. If this is true the whole romantic history of the world will have to be rewritten and the verdicts of numberless juries in murder trials passionels ought to be set aside.
The statement is that physical desire is universal among men, but not among women. One-third of all women, Kendall puts them in Class C, have no such desire; therefore, they deserve no particular credit for remaining virtuous. Another third of all women are in Class B, the normal class, where this desire is or is not present, according to circumstances. The last third of all women make up Class A, and these women, being as strongly tempted as men (or more so), are condemned to the same struggles that men experience, and, if they happen to be beautiful, and without deep spirituality, they are fated to have emotional experiences that may make them great heroines or artists, great adventuresses or outcasts.
I am sure I do not belong in Class C, I hope I belong in Class B, but I am afraid—