at made me so!
Life boils itself down to this, doesn't it?" she went on, staring
drearily at the shadowy corner of the room beyond her. "That women have
something to sell, or give away, and the question is just how much each
one can get for it! That's what makes the most insignificant married
woman feel superior to the happiest and richest old maid. She says to
herself, 'I've made my market. Somebody chose me!' That's what
motherhood and homemaking rest on: the whole world is just one great big
question of sex, spinning away in space! And even after a woman is
married, she still plays with sex; she likes to feel that men admire
her, doesn't she? At dinners there must be a man for every woman; at
dances no two girls must dance together! And here, the minute a new girl
comes to join my clubs, I try to read her face. Is she pure, or has she
already thrown away--"

"Julia, _dear_!" said Jim, amazed and troubled, but she silenced him with
a quick gesture. Her cheeks were burning now, and her words came fast.

"Those poor little girls at St. Anne's," she said feverishly, "they've
thrown their lives away because this thing that is in the air all about
them came too close. They were too young legally to be trusted as Nature
has trusted them for years! They heard people talk of it, and laugh
about it--it didn't _seem_ very dangerous--"

"Julia!" Jim said again, pleadingly.

"Just one moment, Jim, and I'll be done! When they had learned their
lesson, when they had found out what sorrow it brought, when they knew
that there was only loss and shame in it for them--then it was too late!
Then men, and women, too, expected them to go on giving; there was
nothing else to do. Oh," said Julia, in a heartbreaking voice, bringing
her locked hands down upon the table as if she were in physical agony,
"if the law would only take a hand before and not afterward! Or if, when
they are sick to death of men, they could believe that time would wash
it all away; that there was clean, good work for them somewhere in the
world!"

"My darling, why distress yourself about what can't possibly concern
you?" Jim said. Julia stared at him thoughtfully for a few silent
seconds.

"It _does_ concern me. That's how I bought my wisdom," she said quietly
then, with no emotion deeper than a mild regret visible in her face.
Voice and manner were swept bare of passion; she seemed infinitely
fatigued. "That's why I can't marry you, Jim."

"What do you mean?