Julia poured tea from a flat vermilion pot. The tea stood clear and dark in the black cups. Over the two women hung a moist bitter odor, the bruised sweetness of withering roses. The afternoon smells of dampened dust and new-cut grass blew in from the street.
Mrs. Hurst took her cup in her small, slightly unsteady hand, and sipped. The veins were growing large and hard and showed through the delicately withered skin on which there were tiny brown spots like stains. She wore a wedding ring rubbed thin. "My dear, you still have that wonderful old Negress who used to be your maid? How do you manage to keep her? I'm always struggling with some fresh domestic problem." Mrs. Hurst smiled and with her free hand settled her trim glasses on her neat nose. Her sweet little face, turned toward Julia, showed a determined insistence on negative happiness. "I think we have a great deal more to struggle with than our grandmothers did. We haven't only our homes to look after, but our social responsibilities are so great." Mrs. Hurst was beautifully and simply dressed in gray, and the soft outline of her hat, with its tilt of roses at the back, gave an air of gallantry to her faded features, which were those of a sophisticated little girl—the face of a woman of forty-six whose sex life has passed away without her knowing it.
"I'm afraid I've become a renegade as far as my social responsibilities are concerned. I feel myself so inadequate to any real accomplishment, Mrs. Hurst." Julia smiled guardedly and resentfully. Something in her wanted to destroy the delicate aggressive repose of the woman opposite, and felt helpless before it.
"Ah, you mustn't feel that, my dear. All of us feel it at times, but I do believe that it depends on us women more than on our men folk, perhaps, to allay the unrest of our day. Changing conditions of labor have taken the homes away from so many. I think we should carry the spirit of the home out into the world." Mrs. Hurst made a plaintive little moue of faded sauciness. As men were obliterated from her personal interests, she reverted to a child's demure coquetry in pleading her cause with her own sex.
"I can't look upon myself as the person for such a mission," Julia said. Her eyes and lips were cold as she stared pleasantly at her visitor. Julia felt a sudden sharp vanity in the thought of the sin against society which initiated her into another life. She was confused by her pride in adultery, and sought for an exalted ethical term which would justify her sense of glorying in her act. Dudley—his hands upon me. I couldn't be free. Eagles. The ethics of eagles. Julia knew that she was absurd. She was humiliated and defiant. She was aware of her body under her clothes as apart from her, and as though it were the only thing in the world that lived. It was terrible to feel her body lost from her. She fancied this was what people meant by the sense of nakedness. When Dudley kissed her on the lips there was no nakedness, for she and her body had the same existence. She despised Mrs. Hurst, who separated her from her body. "You know I haven't a real genius for setting the world right."
Mrs. Hurst was gentle and severe. "We can't afford to lose you! I shall ask your delightful husband to influence you. As for genius—I imagine each of us has his own definition of that. We all think you showed something very much like genius in your conduct of the college campaign fund last winter. You should hear Charles expatiate on your cleverness as a business woman. We are practical people, Julia Farley, and we do need money. It is the golden key which opens the door for most of our ideals, I'm afraid."
Julia frowned slightly and tried to control her irritation. "Why can't Mr. Hurst undertake some of the financial problems? He would reduce my poor little efforts to such insignificance."
"But there you are, my dear! Charles lives in a man's world. He doesn't understand these things. Women are the conscience of the race." Mrs. Hurst smiled again and in her small mouth showed even rows of artificial teeth.
When Julia woke in the night beside Laurence she perceived her body lying there naked and apart, and hands moving over it—horrible and secret hands. In the daytime in the street the body walked with her outside her clothes. With strange men her consciousness of that horrible impersonal flesh that was hers, though she knew nothing of it—though it belonged to the whole world—was most acute.