She nodded.
"Tell me about it—won't you?"
She looked at him in astonishment, so amazing seemed the idea that she could tell anyone that experience. It would be like voluntarily showing a hideous, repulsive scar or wound, for sometimes it was scar, and sometimes open wound, and always the thing that made whatever befell her endurable by comparison.
She did not answer his appeal for her confidence but went on,
"Anyhow, nothing could induce me to go to work again. You don't
realize what work means—the only sort of work I can get to do.
It's—it's selling both body and soul. I prefer——"
He kissed her to stop her from finishing her sentence. "Don't—please," he pleaded. "You don't understand. In this life you'll soon grow hard and coarse and lose your beauty and your health—and become a moral and physical wreck."
She reflected, the grave expression in her eyes—the expression that gave whoever saw it the feeling of dread as before impending tragedy. "Yes—I suppose so," she said. "But—— Any sooner than as a working girl living in a dirty hole in a tenement? No—not so soon. And in this life I've got a chance if I'm careful of my health and—and don't let things touch me. In that other—there's no chance—none!"
"What chance have you got in this life?"
"I don't know exactly. I'm very ignorant yet. At worst, it's simply that I've got no chance in either life—and this life is more comfortable."
"Comfortable! With men you don't like—frightful men——"
"Were you ever cold?" asked Susan.