s who have no decency, no heart! A woman is desperate and must
confide in someone. She has lost her position and is struggling to find
another. She craves innocent pleasure--music, the theatre, the dance.
_She is so horribly lonely._ Help me, counsel me, she pleads to some man
whom she trusts--any man, the average man. Does he help her? Yes, on one
condition, that she use her power as a woman. Not otherwise. This is a
great mystery to women--how men, who are naturally kind, can be so
cruel, so persistent, so infernally clever in forcing women to use their
power for their own undoing."

* * * * *

_Tuesday._

Here is an interesting thing that Kendall Brown once said on this
subject--I recorded it in my diary along with other sayings of this
erratic Greenwich Village poet and philosopher:

"The sex power of women is the most formidable power ever loosed upon
earth," he declared one evening. "Thrones totter before it. Captains of
industry forget their millions in its presence. _Cherchez la femme!_
This terrible power is possessed by every dark-eyed siren in a Second
Avenue boarding house, by every languishing, red-lipped blonde earning
eighteen dollars a week in a department store. And she knows it! Others
have vast earthly possessions, stores of science, palaces of art,
knowledge without end--she has a _tresor_ that makes baubles of
these--she is the custodian of life, _she has the eternal life power_."

How true that is!

Again I wrote:

"It may be argued that women are willing victims of this man conspiracy,
I say _no_! Every woman in her heart longs to love _one_ man, to give
herself to _one_ man, to be true to _one_ man. Even the unfortunate in
the streets, if she receives just a little kindness, if she has only
half a chance and is encouraged to right living by some decent fellow,
will go through fire and water to show her gratitude and devotion. But
men give women no chance. They pluck the roses in the garden and trample
them under foot. Here is the great tragedy of modern life--_men wish to
change from one woman to another, whereas women do not wish to change. A
characteristic sex difference between men and women is that men are
naturally promiscuous, but women abhor the thought of promiscuousness._"

* * * * *

_Sunday._

A wave of repulsion runs over me as I quickly turn the pages of my life
with Julian. And then a faint whisper comes to me