She was young and pretty and restless. She had acquired a greed of praise. She had given up her public glory to be her husband's private prima donna; and then her audience had abandoned her.
Though her soul traveled far in a short time by the calendar, every metamorphosis was slow and painful and imperceptible. She wept her eyes dry; then moped until her gloom grew intolerable. The first diversion she sought was really an effort of her grief to renew itself by a little repose. Her first amusement was for her grief's sake. But before long her diversions were undertaken for diversion's sake.
She had to have friends and she had to take what she could get. The more earnest elements of society did not interest her, nor she them. The fast crowd disgusted her at first, but remained the only one that did not repulse her advances.
Her first glimpses of the revelers filled her with repugnance and confirmed her in what she had heard and read of the wickedness of the rich. The fact that she had seen also the virtuous rich, solemn rich, religious rich, miserly rich, was forgotten. The fact that in every stage of means there are the same classes escaped her memory. She had known of middle classes where libertinism flourished, had known of licentiousness among the poor shopkeepers, shoddy intriguers in the humble boarding-houses.
But now she felt that money made vice and forgot that vice is one of the amusements accessible to the very poorest, to all who inherit flesh and its appetites.
Gradually she forgot her horror of dissipation. The outswirling eddy of the gayer crowd began to gather and compel her feet. She lacked the wisdom to attract the intellectuals, the culture to run with the artistic and musical sets, the lineage to satisfy that curious few who find a congeniality in the fact that their ancestors were respectable and recorded persons.
In the fast gang she did not need to have or use her brains. She did not need a genealogy. Her beauty was her admission-fee. Her restlessness was her qualification.
Those who were careless of their own behavior were careless of their accomplices. They accepted Kedzie without scruple. They accepted especially the invitations she could well afford. She ceased to be afraid of a compliment. She grew addicted to flattery. She learned to take a joke off-color and match it in shade.
She met women of malodorous reputation and found that they were not so black as they had been painted. She learned how warm-hearted and charitable a woman could be for whom the world had a cold shoulder and no charity.
She extended her tolerance from men whose escapades had been national topics to women who had been involved in distinguished scandals and were busily involving themselves anew. Being tolerant of them, he had to be tolerant of their ways. Forgiving the sinner helps to forgive the sin. There are few things more endearing than forgiveness. One of the most appealing figures in literature and art is the forgiven woman taken in adultery.