This sentence was a shock to Paula's intelligence. It was spoken without consciousness of the meaning which drove so deep into the other's mind. It suggested a mind dependent altogether upon physical eyes. Paula refused to believe that this was the key to the whole matter.
"They have been so cruel to me—those female things which bloom a year," Selma Cross continued. "Flesh-flowers! They harried me to martyrdom. I had to hate them, because I was forced to be one with them—I, a big savage, dreaming unutterable things. It's all so close yet, I haven't come to pity them.... Maybe you can tell me what good they are—what they mean in the world—the shallow, brainless things who make the stage full! They are in factories, too, everywhere—daughters of the coolies and peasants of Europe—only worse over here because their fathers have lost their low fixed place in society, and are all mixed in their dim, brute minds. They have no one to rule them. You will see a family of dirty, frightened, low-minded children—the eldest, say a girl of fifteen. A dog or a cat with a good home is rich beside them. Take this eldest girl of a brood—with all the filth of foreign New York in and about her. She is fifteen and ready for the streets. It is the year of her miracle. I've seen it a score of times. You miss her a few months and she appears again at work somewhere—her face decently clean, her eyes clear, a bit of bright ribbon and a gown wrung somewhere from the beds of torture. It is her brief bloom—so horrid to look at when you know what it means. All the fifteen years of squalor, evil, and low-mindedness for this one year—a bloom-girl out of the dirt! And the next, she has fallen back, unwashed, high-voiced, hardening, stiffening,—a babe at her breast, dull hell in her heart. All her living before and to come—for that one bloom year. Maybe you can tell me what the big purpose of it all is. Earth uses them quite as ruthlessly as any weed or flower—gives them a year to bloom, not for beauty, but that more crude seeds may be scattered. Perpetuate! Flowers bloom to catch a bug—such girls, to catch a man—perpetuate—oh God, what for? And these things have laughed at me in the chorus, called me 'Crazy Sal,' because I spoke of things they never dreamed."
"Yes," Paula said quickly, "I've seen something like that. How you will pity them when you are rested! It is hard for us to understand why such numbers are sacrificed like a common kind of plants. Nietzsche calls them 'the much-too-many.' But Nietzsche does not know quite so much as the Energy that wills them to manifest. It is dreadful, it is pitiful. It would seem, if God so loved the world—that He could not endure such pity as would be His at the sight of this suffering and degradation.... But you have no right to despise them—you, of all women. You're blooming up, up, up,—farther and farther out of the common—your blooming has been for years because you have kindled your mind. You must bloom for years still—that's the only meaning of your strength—because you will kindle your soul.... A woman with power like yours—has no right but to love the weak. Think what strength you have! There have been moments in the last half-hour that you have roused me to such a pitch of thinking—that I have felt weak and ineffectual beside you. You made me think sometimes of a great submarine—I don't know just why—flashing in the depths."
"I don't think you see me right," Selma Cross said wearily. "Many times I have been lost in the dark. I have been wicked—hated the forces that made me. I have so much in me of the peasant—that I abhor. There have been times when I would have been a prostitute for a clean house and decent clothes to cover me, but men did not look at The Thing—only the old man, and one other!" Her eyes brightened, either at the memory or at the thought that she was free from the former.... "Don't wince and I'll tell you about that angel. You will be wiser. I don't want you for my friend, if I must keep something back. It was over three years ago, during my first real success. I was rather startling as Sarah Blixton in Heber's Caller Herrin. It was in that that I learned repression. That was my struggle—to repress.... Old man Villiers saw me, and was wise enough to see my future. 'Here's a girl,' I can imagine him saying, 'who is ugly enough to be square to one man, and she's a comer in spite of her face.' He showed where his check-book could be of unspeakable service. It was all very clear to me. I felt I had struggled enough, and went with him.... Villiers is that kind of New Yorker who feels that he has nothing left to live for, when he ceases to desire women. In his vanity—they are always vain—he wanted to be seen with a woman mentioned on Broadway. It was his idea of being looked up to—and of making other men envious. You know his sort have no interest—save where they can ruin.
"Then for two winter months, Villiers and I had a falling out. He went South, and I remained here to work. During this time I had my first real brush with love—a young Westerner. It was terrific. He was a brilliant, but turned out a rotten cad. I couldn't stand that in a young man.... You can pity an old man, much the worse for living, when he is brazenly a cad—doesn't know anything else.... When Villiers came back from the South I was bought again. I put it all nakedly, Paula, but I was older than you are now, when that sort of thing began with me. Remember that! Still, I mustn't take too much credit, because I didn't attract men.... If you don't abhor me now, you never will, little neighbor, because you have the worst.... Sometime I'll tell you a real little love story—oh, I'm praying it's real! He's a hunch-back, Paula,—the author of The Thing.... Nobody could possibly want a hunch-back but me—yet I'm not good enough. He's so noble and so fine!... The past is so full of abominations, and I'm not a liar.... I don't think he'd want me—though I could be his nurse. I could carry him!... Then there is a long-ago promise.... Oh, I know I'm not fit for that kind of happiness!..."
There was an inspiration in the last. It was strong enough to subvert Paula's mind from the road of dreary degradation over which she had been led. From rousing heights of admiration to black pits of shame, she had fallen, but here again was a tonic breath from clean altitudes. The picture in her mind of this great glowing creature tenderly mothering the poor crippled genius of The Thing—was a thrilling conception.
"There is nothing which cannot be forgiven—save soul-death!" Paula said ardently. "What you have told me is very hard to adjust, but I hope for your new love. Oh, I am glad, Selma, that the other is all behind! I don't know much of such things, but it has come to me that it is easier for a man to separate himself from past degradations and be clean—than a woman. This is because a man gives—but the woman receives her sin! That which is given cannot continue to defile, but woman is the matrix.... Still, you do not lie. Such things are so dreadful when matted in lies. We all carry burdensome devils—but few uncover them, as you have done for me. There is something noble in looking back into the past with a shudder, saying,—'I was sick and full of disease in those days,' but when one hugs the corrosion, painting it white all over—there is an inner devouring that is never appeased.... All our sisters are in trouble. I think we live in a world of suffering sororities. You are big and powerful. Your greater life is to come.... I am glad for what you have put behind. You will progress farther and farther from it. I am glad you are back across the hall—alone!"
For many moments after Selma Cross had gone, Paula sat thinking under the lamp. At last she drew the sheets of the letter to Charter from the desk-drawer, and read them over. The same rapt smile came to her lips, as when she was writing. It was a letter to her Ideal—the big figure of cleanness and strength, she wanted this man to be. Even a line or two she added. No one ever knew, but Paula.... At length, she began tearing the sheets. Finer and finer became the squares under her tense fingers—a little pile of confetti on the desk at last—and brushed into a basket.... Then she wrote another letter, blithe, brief, gracious—about his book and her opinion. It was a letter such as he would expect....