"Oh, my darling! My darling! Couldn't you have told me—let me sit with you, talk, read to you—love you to sleep? Why did you do this, Geraldine?"
"Nothing—very disgraceful—ever happened. It only helped me to sleep when I was excited and miserable.... I—I didn't care what I did—Duane and Rosalie made me so wretched. And there seemed no use in my trying to be different from others, and I thought I might as well be as rotten as everybody. But I tried and couldn't—I tried, for instance, to misbehave with Jack Dysart, but I couldn't—and I only hated myself and him and Rosalie and Duane!"
She sat up, flushed, dishevelled, lips quivering. "I want to confess! I've been horribly depraved for a week! I gambled with the Pink 'uns and swore as fashionably as I knew how! I scorched my tongue with cigarettes; I sat in Bunny Gray's room with the door bolted and let him teach me how to make silver fizzes and Chinese juleps out of Rose wine and saki! I let Jack Dysart retain my hand—and try to kiss me—several times——"
"Geraldine!"
"I did. I wanted to be horrid."
She sat there breathing fast, her big brown eyes looking defiantly at Kathleen, but the child's mouth quivered beyond control and the nervous hands tightened and relaxed.
"How bad have I been, Kathleen? It sounds pretty bad to tell it. But Muriel says 'damn!' and Rosalie says 'the devil!' and when anything goes wrong and I say, 'Oh, fluff!' I mean swearing, so I thought I'd do it.... And almost every woman I know smokes and has her favourite cocktail, and they all bet and play for stakes; and from what I hear talked about, nobody's conduct is modified because anybody happens to be married——"
The horror in Kathleen's blue eyes checked her; she hid her face in her hands for a moment, then flung out her arms and crushed Kathleen to her breast.
"I'm going to tell Duane how I've behaved. I couldn't rest until he knows the very worst ... how fearfully common and bad a girl I can be. Darling, don't break down. I don't want to go any closer to the danger line than I've been. And, oh, I'm so ashamed, so humiliated—I—I wish I could go to Duane as—as clean and sweet and innocent as he would have me. For he is the dearest boy—and I love him so, Kathleen. I'm so silly about him.... I've got to tell him how I behaved, haven't I?"