She smiled at his vehemence.
“What would you have done?” she said. “You cannot impart intelligence to a fool, heart to a coward, or delicacy of feeling to a boor.”
“I could have chastised the miserable insulter.”
She had a superb gesture of indifference.
“Bash!” she interrupted. “What are insults to me? I am so accustomed to them, that they no longer have any effect upon me. I am eighteen: I have neither family, relatives, friends, nor any one in the world who even knows my existence; and I live by my labor. Can’t you see what must be the humiliations of each day? Since I was eight years old, I have been earning the bread I eat, the dress I wear, and the rent of the den where I sleep. Can you understand what I have endured, to what ignominies I have been exposed, what traps have been set for me, and how it has happened to me sometimes to owe my safety to mere physical force? And yet I do not complain, since through it all I have been able to retain the respect of myself, and to remain virtuous in spite of all.”
She was laughing a laugh that had something wild in it.
And, as Maxence was looking at her with immense surprise,
“That seems strange to you, doesn’t it?” she resumed. “A girl of eighteen, without a sou, free as air, very pretty, and yet virtuous in the midst of Paris. Probably you don’t believe it, or, if you do, you just think, ‘What on earth does she make by it?’
“And really you are right; for, after all, who cares, and who thinks any the more of me, if I work sixteen hours a day to remain virtuous? But it’s a fancy of my own; and don’t imagine for a moment that I am deterred by any scruples, or by timidity, or ignorance. No, no! I believe in nothing. I fear nothing; and I know as much as the oldest libertines, the most vicious, and the most depraved. And I don’t say that I have not been tempted sometimes, when, coming home from work, I’d see some of them coming out of the restaurants, splendidly dressed, on their lover’s arm, and getting into carriages to go to the theatre. There were moments when I was cold and hungry, and when, not knowing where to sleep, I wandered all night through the streets like a lost dog. There were hours when I felt sick of all this misery, and when I said to myself, that, since it was my fate to end in the hospital, I might as well make the trip gayly. But what! I should have had to traffic my person, to sell myself!”
She shuddered, and in a hoarse voice,