The doctor stops him with a gesture.
GIRL [angrily] It’s just as I tell you. What else could I have done, eh? If you’d been in my place you’d have done just the same. [Quieting down] See here, what’s the good of making a fuss about it? You’ll say: ‘But you haven’t been living straight.’ No more I have, but how could I help it? I couldn’t stay in my places; and then, when you’re hungry and a jolly young chap offers you a dinner, my word, I’d like to see the girl who’d say no. I never learnt any trade, you see. So that the end of it all is that I found myself in St. Lazare because I was ill. That’s pretty low down, too. These beastly men give you their foul diseases and it’s me they stick in prison. It’s a bit thick, that is.
DOCTOR. You gave them as good as you got, didn’t you, though?
GIRL [gaily] Oh, I had my tit for tat! [To Loches] I suppose you’d like to have that too? Before they carted me off there, the day I found out I was in for it, I was going home in a pretty temper when who do you think I met in the street but my old boss! I was that glad to see him! Now, thinks I to myself, you’re going to pay me what you owe me—with interest too! I just winked at him: oh, it didn’t take long, I can tell you. [Tragically] Then when I left him, I don’t know what came over me—I felt half mad. I took on everyone I could, for anything or for nothing! As many as I could, all the youngest and the best looking—well, I only gave ’em back what they gave me! Now somehow I don’t care any more: where’s the use in pulling long faces about things? It only makes me laugh. Other women, they do just the same; but then they do it for their bread and butter, d’you see. A girl must live even if she is ill, eh? [A pause] Well, you’ll give my name to the chap at the theatre, won’t you? The doc here’ll tell you my address.
LOCHES. I promise you I will.
GIRL. Thank ye, sir.
She goes out.
DOCTOR. Was I not right to keep that confession for the end? This poor girl is typical. The whole problem is summed up in her: she is at once the product and the cause. We set the ball rolling, others keep it up, and it runs back to bruise our own shins. I have nothing more to say. [He shakes hands with Loches as he conducts him to the door, and adds in a lighter tone] But if you give a thought or two to what you have just seen when you are sitting in the Chamber, we shall not have wasted our time.