She looked puzzled. Then she gave a vague little laugh. "As good as any one else, I suppose. What do you mean by 'good?'"
"Clean-living. Is he a pure man?"
Now she laughed uproariously: her voice jarred on me. "Is he a pure man? My dear Mademoiselle, of course he's not. That's a what-d'ye-call-it, a contradiction in terms, like saying a white nigger. Emile is like the others: keeps mistresses, goes to actress' dressing-rooms, sees cocottes."
"Sees them?" I repeated the silly euphemism mechanically.
"Sleeps with them, possesses them then, if you prefer. Why look so wretched about it? It doesn't worry me. It is the world." Her candid pleasure in shocking me, and the more refined delight of superior worldly-wisdom both failed to annoy me as they should have done: I could only think of the nightmare foulness itself.
"You say—it doesn't worry you? You can love a man like that?"
"Naturally. Better than any other kind, if there were another kind. The more women he has loved, the greater is the compliment in choosing me. If a man is a better schoolmaster the more experience he has had and the more children he has taught, then a man is a better lover the more experience he has had and the more women he has loved. That's logic. Besides, I prefer the man of the world."
"Suzanne!" I cried, calling her by her Christian name for the first time—a twinkle in her eyes acknowledged the fact; I was too deadly earnest for her to dare to smile—"Suzanne, is it true? You are not exaggerating for fun, or to shock me? Do most young girls of our age believe that? Does your mother know you think like that? Do you realize how sick and wretched you are making me? Tell me it is not true!"
"It is true, Mary. I suppose there is still a pretence kept up by mothers, and curés, that young girls don't know how men live; it may have been so once, but now, my dear, we are in the Second Empire! Maybe Mamma fondly imagines Elise and I are still in our cradles, and daren't look at a pair of trousers: she can imagine just what she pleases for all I care. But I am really sorry I have made you miserable. What is the good of worrying about it? The world is like that, you must take it so—"