She stared at me in a startled way:
“You do not mean dishonour, monsieur. Ah no! You cannot mean that.”
“Is it not better to do that than starve?”
“It is better to die than to do that, I sink. I am good Catholic, Monsieur.”
“Do not call me Monsieur! Are we not fellow waifs? So you think it is less sin to take your own life than to sell your honour?”
“It is that that I think, Monsieur.”
As I looked into the steady, blue eyes I saw a look of faith that almost amounted to fanaticism, a sort of Joan of Arc look. “How curious!” I thought. “I was under the impression such sentiments were confined to books.” However, I determined to fall back on cynicism, and to seem the more cynical I lit a cigarette. She watched me with a curious intensity; and as she stood there quietly, a naphtha lamp lit up her pale, earnest face.
“Ah! young lady,” I remarked mockingly, “you speak like a penny novelette. In fact, you say the same thing as did my heroine Monica Klein in A Shirtmaker’s Romance. It only remains for you to die to slow music in the snow outside the door of a fashionable church. That’s what happened to Monica. I shed a bucket of tears as I wrote that scene. But I thought we had decided you were to be Fact not Fiction?”
“I do not understand, Monsieur.”
“Then let me explain. Idealism is a luxury we poor people can’t afford. If you should be forced into dishonour for bread, lives there a man that would dare blame you? To me you would be as good as the purest woman, even though you walk the streets. Nay! I’m not sure that you wouldn’t be better, because you would be a victim, a sacrifice, a martyr. No, you’re wrong, mademoiselle. I think you’re wrong.”