"I again started to walk away, but he seized my arm and shouted angrily: 'You cannot leave me like this without explaining some things to me. In the first place, why did you pull me on last Saturday night, and who are you to turn me down like this?' I answered, with flashing eyes, 'I owe you no explanation, but I will answer your questions. As to who the girl is who can dare to turn you down, you know very well she is not what you think, or you wouldn't so much object to being turned down, as you call it. As to pulling you on, you were the first to speak or, at any rate, it was mutual, so you need not demand any explanation. What you really want to know is why I don't want you now. If I were a man like you, I suppose I should never even think of explaining to anyone why I happened to change in feeling toward some persons, but as I'm a woman, it's different. I must explain!'
"This speech I have no doubt made him angry, but his pride came to the rescue and he said with a show of indifference: 'I was angry, it is true, but only for a moment. It was irritating to me to have a girl like you show the nerve to throw me down; for I'm not accustomed to associate with your sort.'
"At this insolence my face flushed hotly and I opened my mouth to make some indignant reply, but I thought better of it and only walked away, laughing softly to myself. As I went away, I heard him mutter, 'What a cat.'
"But, I imagine, he didn't forget me so easily. I have no doubt that the girl with the red lips and deep dark eyes haunted him for a long time. Who was this girl who had given herself to him once and only once? It is this kind of a mystery that makes a man dream and dream and curse himself.
"Probably for some time, as he joined the crowd at State and Madison Streets, he hoped to see me as I passed, but all things come to an end and his passion for me did, no doubt, too. But, in the routine course of his club life, moments came, perhaps, when he thought of little Marie, her red lips, deep eyes, and pale, pale face. I doubt if he ever told this story to any of his boon companions."
CHAPTER V
Marie's Salvation
On account of the irregularity of her life, Marie lost job after job. Her relations with her mother, never good, grew worse and worse. Her profound need of experience, in which the demand of the senses and the curiosity of the mind were equally represented, impelled her to act after act of recklessness and abandon. But, as in almost all, perhaps all, human beings, there was in her soul a need of justification—of social justification, no matter how few persons constituted the approving group.