"You wouldn't say that if you had tried it."
"Indeed, I should," she declared with spirit. "You men are entirely too soft about women. You don't realize how strong they are. And, of course, women don't resist the temptation to use their sex when they see how easy it is to fool men that way. The sad thing about it is that the woman who gets along by using her sex and by appealing to the soft-heartedness of men never learns to rely on herself. She's likely to come to grief sooner or later."
"There's truth in all that," said Norman. "Enough to make it dangerously unjust. There's so much lying done about getting on that it's no wonder those who've never tried to do for themselves get a wholly false notion of the situation. It is hard--bitterly hard--for a man to get on. Most men don't. Most men? All but a mere handful. And if those who do get on were to tell the truth--the WHOLE truth--about how they succeeded --well, it'd not make a pleasant story."
"But YOU'VE got on," retorted the girl.
"So I have. And how?" Norman smiled with humorous cynicism. "I'll never tell--not all--only the parts that sound well. And those parts are the least important. However, let's not talk about that. What I set out to say was that, while it's hard for a man to make a decent living--unless he has luck--and harder still--much harder--for him to rise to independence----"
"It wasn't so dreadfully hard for YOU," interrupted Josephine, looking at him with proud admiration. "But then, you had a wonderful brain."
"That wasn't what did it," replied he. "And, in spite of all my advantages--friendships, education, enough money to tide me over the beginnings--in spite of all that, I had a frightful time. Not the work. Of course, I had to work, but I like that. No, it was the--the maneuvering, let's call it--the hardening process."
"You!" she exclaimed.
"Everyone who succeeds--in active life. You don't understand the system, dear. It's a cutthroat game.
It isn't at all what the successful hypocrites describe in their talks to young men!" He laughed. "If I had followed the `guides to success,' I'd not be here.
Oh, yes, I've made terrible sacrifices, but--" his look at her made her thrill with exaltation--"it was worth doing. . . . I understand and sympathize with those who scorn to succeed. But I'm glad I happened not to be born with their temperament, at least not with enough of it to keep me down."
"You're too hard on yourself, too generous to the failures."
"Oh, I don't mean the men who were too lazy to do the work or too cowardly to dare the--the unpleasant things. And I'm not hard with myself--only frank.
But we were talking of the women. Poor things, what chance have they got? You scorn them for using their sex. Wait till you're drowning, dear, before you criticise another for what he does to save himself when he's sinking for the last time. I used everything I had in making my fight. If I could have got on better or quicker by the aid of my sex, I'd have used that."
"Don't say those things, Fred," cried Josephine, smiling but half in earnest.
"Why not? Aren't you glad I'm here?"
She gave him a long look of passionate love and lowered her eyes.
"At whatever cost?"
"Yes," she said in a low voice. "But I'm SURE you exaggerate."
"I've done nothing YOU wouldn't approve of--or find excuses for. But that's because you--I--all of us in this class--and in most other classes--have been trained to false ideas--no, to perverted ideas--to a system of morality that's twisted to suit the demands of practical life. On Sundays we go to a magnificent church to hear an expensive preacher and choir, go in expensive dress and in carriages, and we never laugh at ourselves. Yet we are going in the name of One who was born in a stable and who said that we must give everything to the poor, and so on."
"But I don't see what we could do about it--" she said hesitatingly.
"We couldn't do anything. Only--don't you see my point?--the difference between theory and practice?
Personally, I've no objection--no strong objection--to the practice. All I object to is the lying and faking about it, to make it seem to fit the theory. But we were talking of women--women who work."
"I've no doubt you're right," admitted she. "I suppose they aren't to blame for using their sex. I ought to be ashamed of myself, to sneer at them."
"As a matter of fact, their sex does few of them any good. The reverse. You see, an attractive woman --one who's attractive AS a woman--can skirmish round and find some one to support her. But most of the working women--those who keep on at it--don't find the man. They're not attractive, not even at the start.
After they've been at it a few years and lose the little bloom they ever had--why, they've got to take their chances at the game, precisely like a man. Only, they're handicapped by always hoping that they'll be able to quit and become married women. I'd like to see how men would behave if they could find or could imagine any alternative to `root hog or die.' "
"What's the matter with you this evening, Fred?
I never saw you in such a bitter mood."
"We never happened to get on this subject before."
"Oh, yes, we have. And you always have scoffed at the men who fail."
"And I still scoff at them--most of them. A lot of lazy cowards. Or else, so bent on self-indulgence--petty self-indulgence--that they refuse to make the small sacrifice to-day for the sake of the large advantage day after to-morrow. Or else so stuffed with vanity that they never see their own mistakes. However, why blame them? They were born that way, and can't change. A man who has the equipment of success and succeeds has no more right to sneer at one less lucky than you would have to laugh at a poor girl because she wasn't dressed as well as you."
"What a mood! SOMETHING must have happened."
"Perhaps," said he reflectively. "Possibly that girl set me off."
"What girl?"
"The one I told you about. The unfortunate little creature who was typewriting for me this afternoon.
Not so very little, either. A curious figure she had.
