"Yes—in the end."
"Then He must be pretty deaf.... You look nice saying your prayers. If I were God I couldn't refuse you anything. P'raps He's a woman-hater. Women get the worst of it everywhere, I think. If we do wrong, we have to pay for it. If we don't do wrong, we have to pay just the same. We're made so that we're not fit to be working all the time. Oh, it's a hell of a world for women! I can stand anything when I feel it's fair and just. I can't see any justice where we're concerned. They have an inspector Johnnie to see that the scales in the grocery-shops are fair, but if a woman wants to make a bargain she's got to do it on the heavy side."
"The law courts are the scales."
"The law? Aren't the scales against us there too? If we want a divorce we've got to be knocked about as well as—other things. If we're deserted and ruined before we're married we can get so many shillings a week until the kid's in his teens. And if there's no kid or it dies, well, p'raps your God'll help us, but the law won't. It's all too hard to fight against, and one can't make head or tail of it. Look at the White Slave Traffic. They'll flog a man if they catch him at it, but they won't flog De Freyne and give him hard labor for the dirty work he's doing every day of his life, though everybody knows about it. Why, he's only a—what's it called?—procurer for the nobility and gentry and all the rich bounders. And we're not all in yet, but we shall be. My word, one hears a lot about the chorus-girl being on the make-haste and living you-know-how. One doesn't hear how she's driven into it, like cattle into a dirty pen. I'm done, Lexie. I shan't hold out long."
Alexandra blew out the remaining candle. In the darkness one could just make out the two narrow beds and the glimmer of the window.
"You mustn't give in, Maggy," came Alexandra's voice after a pause. "When one meets the man one cares about one doesn't want to come to him with nothing to give."
"Why not? There isn't a man in a hundred who comes to a woman with a clean slate. Why should they expect us to have nothing written on ours?"
"Because when a man marries nature makes him want a pure woman, not for his own sake but because of the children she will probably have. For myself, I know I would rather show a clean slate to the man I loved and who loved me in a decent way whatever his life had been, than let a man who was nothing to me write his name there first. That must be wrong because it's against nature."
"Is it? I don't know. You can argue better than I can. You don't lose your temper. Let's bring it down to ourselves and our difficulties. The stage is a honey-pot and we girls are the honey in it, and the men are the flies buzzing round. They won't leave us alone. They make it almost impossible for us to live a decent life. And if it's decent it isn't beautiful. You can't call it beautiful, Lexie. This room's the limit. Think of the food we eat. Generally beastly. And our clothes. Everything's ugly and makeshift, and yet we've only got to stretch out our little fingers—"
"More than our little fingers."