"I hated the thought. I was in love twice; but I had a sort of cold purity that I was proud of. The bare idea of—of that nauseated me."
"Pity you hadn't done settlement work first. That must have knocked prudishness out of you, I should think."
"It horrified me so that for several years I hardly could go on with it, and I have always refused to mix the sexes in my house down there, but, of course, I could not help hearing things—seeing things—and after a while I did get hardened—and ceased to be revolted. I learned to look upon all that sort of thing as a matter of course. But it was too late then. I had lost what little looks I had ever possessed. I grew to look like an old maid long before I was thirty. Why is nature so cruel, Mary?"
"I fancy a good many American women develop very slowly sexually. You were merely one of them. I wonder you had the climacteric so early. But nature is very fond of taking her little revenges. You defied her and she smote you."
"Oh, yes, she smote me! But I never fully realized it until you came."
"I hardly follow you."
"Oh, don't you see? You have shown us that women can begin life over again, undo their awful mistakes. And yet I don't dare—don't dare——"
"Why not, pray? Better come with me to Vienna if you haven't the courage to face the music here."
"Oh, I haven't the courage. I couldn't carry things off with such a high hand as you do. You were always high and mighty, they say, and have done as you pleased all your life. You don't care a pin whether we approve of what you've done or not. It's the way you're made. But I—couldn't stand it. The admission of vanity, of—of—after the life I've led. The young women would say, in their nasty slang, that I was probably man-crazy."
"And aren't you?" asked Mary coolly. "Isn't that just what is the matter? The sex-imagination often outlives the withering of the sex-glands. Come now, admit it. Forget that you are a pastel-tinted remnant of the old order and call a spade a spade."