"There's something terrifying about you, Mary." Miss Trevor had flushed a dark purple, but she had very honest eyes, and they did not falter. "But I respect you more than any woman I have ever known. And although you are not very sympathetic you are the only person on earth to whom I could even mention such a subject."
"Well, go ahead," said Mary resignedly. "If you want my advice, take your courage in your hands and do it. However people may carp, there is nothing they so much admire as courage."
"Yes, but they make you suffer tortures just because they do admire it—or to keep themselves from admitting it."
"True enough. But after all, they don't matter. Life would be so much simpler if we'd all make up our minds that what other people think about us does not signify in the least. It's only permitting it to signify that permits it to exist."
"That's all very well for you, but it's really a question of temperament. Do you think I'd dare come back here looking like a girl again—and I suppose I should. I'm sixteen years younger than you.… You must know how many of the women hate you."
"That sort of hate may be very stimulating, my dear Agnes," said Madame Zattiany drily.
"I can understand that. But I should return to what it is hardly an exaggeration to call a life of a thousand intimacies. The ridicule! The contempt! The merciless criticism! I don't want to live anywhere else. I can't face it! But, oh, I do so want it! I do so want it!"
"But just think of the compensations. No doubt you would marry immediately. If you were happy, and with a man to protect you, how much would you care?"
"Oh!" Once more the thin ascetic face was dyed with an unbecoming flush. "Oh!" And then the barriers fell with a crash and she hurried on, the words tumbling over one another, as her memory, its inhibitions shattered, swept back into the dark vortex of her secret past. "Oh, Mary! You don't know! You don't know! You, who've had all the men you ever wanted. Who, they say, have a young man now. The nights of horror I've passed. I've never slept a wink the nights our girls married. I could have killed them. I could have killed every man I've met for asking nothing of me. It seems to me that I've thought of nothing else for twenty years. When I've been teaching, counselling good thoughts, virtue, good conduct, to those girls down there, it's been in the background of my mind every minute like a terrible obsession. I wonder I haven't gone mad. Some of us old maids do go mad. And no one knew until they raved what was the matter with them. When Hannah de Lacey lost her mind three years ago I heard one of the doctors telling Peter Vane that her talk was the most libidinous he had ever listened to. And she was the most forbidding old maid in New York. I know if I lose my mind it will be the same, and that alone is enough to drive any decent woman mad.… I thought I'd get over it in time—I used to pray—and fight with my will—but when the time came when I should have been released I was afraid I would, and then I deliberately did everything I could to keep it alive. I couldn't lose my right—— It was my right. I couldn't tell you all the things I've—— Oh, I tell you that unless I can be young again and have some man—any man—I don't care whether he'll marry me or not—I'll go mad—mad!"
Her voice had risen to a shriek. She would be in hysterics in another moment. Mary, who was on the point of nausea, went hastily into her dressing-room and poured out a dose of sal-volatile. "Here!" she said peremptorily. "Drink this. I'll not listen to another word. And I don't wish to be obliged to call an ambulance."