“I know. That’s not it.” The girl leaned against the wall. Two of the angry men had combined against the third. His chief means of defense seemed to be blasphemy. They hurt the ears, those words. She felt an inward twist of humiliation as she remembered that Louis had said rather than see a sister of his go to Nome with the gold rush he’d see her—
“Then what is the matter?” asked the woman at her side, watching her with an odd intentness. “I suppose this isn’t the first time you’ve heard a man swear.”
“The matter is—I feel as if what I’d seen and heard here would leave some sort of lasting stain. As if I’d gone through filth and some of it would stick to me for ever.”
“No, you don’t. You’re only thinking of what some man might think.” Hildegarde caught her breath with the surprise of guilty recognition, as Mrs. Locke’s soft voice insisted: “Knowing doesn’t hurt a woman. Not the right sort of woman. But it does change us. You’ll find life will always look a little different to you after this.”
Bella had said something like that!
“It’s curious,” the woman went on, “how hard we struggle to live up to men’s standard of our ignorance. After all, their instinct about it is quite right.”
“Instinct about what?”
“That if we knew the truth, the truth would make us free.”
“The truth might make frightened slaves of some of us.”
“Only of the meanest.”