“Don’t say that,” Florence answered, “for, indeed, it is not true.”
“But it is,” Mrs. North said eagerly. “I have proved it: once do wrong, and men and women seem to combine to prevent you from ever doing right again. You can’t make a Magdalen of me”—and she held out her hands. “I am young; I am a girl still; you can’t expect me to go in sackcloth and ashes all my life—and that in solitude. I want to be happy; I am hungry—and aching for happiness.”
“I hope you will get some still, but——”
“How can I? Men shun me, unless they want to make me worse; and women fly from me, as if they feared their own respectability would vanish at the mere sight of me. It seems to be made of brittle stuff.”
“It is not that,” Florence interrupted—“but a difference must be made; there must be some punishment—something done to prevent——”
“That is why so many women go on doing wrong,” Mrs. North continued, as if she had not heard the interruption; “they cannot bear the treatment of that portion of the world which has remained unspotted or unfound-out. Oh, the cruelty of good women! I sometimes think it is only the people who have sinned or who have suffered who really know how to feel.”
“That is not true——” Florence began, but still Mrs. North did not heed her.
“Do you know,” she said, speaking under her breath, “I am so sorry for women now that I believe I could kneel down beside a wicked, drunken creature in a gutter, and kiss her, and bring her back, and be tender to her in the hope of making her better. For I understand not only the sin, but the pain and the misery, and the good people, and all else that have driven her there.”
“But some difference must be made—you cannot expect to be received as if people thought you now what they thought you once?”
“I know that,” Mrs. North said scornfully. “People can’t ask me to their parties. I don’t want to go to them. They may not want me for the friend of their daughters, though I should not harm them——” and she burst into tears.