“Do you really mean that? Would you really know?” asked Grace eagerly.
“Would I know? I could see it with my eyes shut. And I can see it’s troubling you. These are things we’ve all got to settle for ourselves, my dear. And from what I know of Ward I’ll wager he’s taking it just as hard as you are. He’s married and he knows just what the whole thing means. I’d be disappointed in him if he didn’t give you a good chance to drop him now even though he suffered terribly. And he’s of the kind who do suffer all right.”
“It might be better,” said Grace soberly, “if I didn’t see him again!”
“You’re going to be unhappy if you do that. You’d both be unhappy. Of course, there’s his wife. He’d be likely to think of her pride and dignity,—chivalry and all that sort of stuff. And if he got a divorce and married you the whole business might be unpleasant. You’re not the sort of girl who could go through a thing like that without suffering terribly. It’s something for you to think about, my dear!”
In spite of her trouble with Kemp, Irene was eating a substantial luncheon. There were times when Grace felt an aversion for Irene. The most sacred relationships of life the girl treated with a cold cynicism that affected Grace disagreeably. She was pondering the sordidness of Irene’s liaison with Kemp. The lofty condescension with which Irene spoke of him amused Grace only mildly.
“Wouldn’t it be grand,” Irene continued, “to be made love to—I mean by some one who really knew how! Somebody who’d approach you as though you were a queen and stand in terrible awe of you! The trouble with all us women nowadays is that we’re too easy. The next time a man shows any symptoms of being interested in me I’m going to be the coy little girl, I can tell you! Oh, I’m not thinking of Tommy”—her lip curled—“I mean where the man really respects you first of all. I tell you, Grace, I’m pretty well fed up on this new woman stuff. Believe me, I’m staying home with mother these nights knitting a sweater for father, and Sunday I’m going to put on a big apron and bake a cake—honest, I am! Women do better as a domestic animal like the common or fireside cat.”
“You don’t really think that!” Grace exclaimed.
“Oh, I know Grace, you’re all for our glorious independence and fighting in the ranks shoulder to shoulder with the men. But the trouble is we can’t fight with them; we’re fighting against them every hour of the day! My dear, there’s a curse on us—the curse of sex! There’s absolutely no ducking it. You may talk all you like about equality and how men and women meet in business and the woman is the equal of the man. All right! She may have just as good a head as the man she’s dealing with but if she still has home-grown teeth and her face isn’t painful to look at sex is all mixed up in the figures. You can’t get away from it.”
“But, Irene——!”
“Oh, I saw you sell a woman a coat yesterday—that old girl from up in the bushes whose husband came along to keep her from blowing his bank roll, and it was the man you sold that rag to, not the woman. Sex! You’re a pretty girl, you know, and he spent twice what he’d let her blow on herself if it hadn’t been for your blandishments. And when I go down to New York on a buying jaunt the polite gentlemen in our line buy me expensive dinners and take me in swift taxies to the theatre and to supper and to snappy dance places afterwards. That’s sex! If the store sends a man down there the same birds buy him a quick lunch and that’s all. But a woman’s different! Sex, my dear, sex!”