FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160  
161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   >>   >|  
ation before she went to bed. This time, there was no doubt, she did not sleep. The more she disentangled the lines of her situation the deeper grew her self-disgust. Occasionally the mere fact of lying in bed became unendurable, and she rolled out and marched about her room and whispered abuse of herself--usually until she hit against some article of furniture. Then she would have quiet times, in which she would say to herself, "Now look here! Let me think it all out!" For the first time, it seemed to her, she faced the facts of a woman's position in the world--the meagre realities of such freedom as it permitted her, the almost unavoidable obligation to some individual man under which she must labor for even a foothold in the world. She had flung away from her father's support with the finest assumption of personal independence. And here she was--in a mess because it had been impossible for her to avoid leaning upon another man. She had thought--What had she thought? That this dependence of women was but an illusion which needed only to be denied to vanish. She had denied it with vigor, and here she was! She did not so much exhaust this general question as pass from it to her insoluble individual problem again: "What am I to do?" She wanted first of all to fling the forty pounds back into Ramage's face. But she had spent nearly half of it, and had no conception of how such a sum could be made good again. She thought of all sorts of odd and desperate expedients, and with passionate petulance rejected them all. She took refuge in beating her pillow and inventing insulting epithets for herself. She got up, drew up her blind, and stared out of window at a dawn-cold vision of chimneys for a time, and then went and sat on the edge of her bed. What was the alternative to going home? No alternative appeared in that darkness. It seemed intolerable that she should go home and admit herself beaten. She did most urgently desire to save her face in Morningside Park, and for long hours she could think of no way of putting it that would not be in the nature of unconditional admission of defeat. "I'd rather go as a chorus-girl," she said. She was not very clear about the position and duties of a chorus-girl, but it certainly had the air of being a last desperate resort. There sprang from that a vague hope that perhaps she might extort a capitulation from her father by a threat to seek that position, and then with ov
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160  
161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
position
 

thought

 

desperate

 

denied

 

individual

 
alternative
 
father
 

chorus

 
window
 

stared


rejected

 

sprang

 
insulting
 

epithets

 
inventing
 

pillow

 
refuge
 
beating
 

petulance

 

resort


passionate

 

extort

 

conception

 

capitulation

 

Ramage

 

expedients

 

intolerable

 

unconditional

 

nature

 

threat


defeat

 
admission
 

putting

 

urgently

 

desire

 
beaten
 

darkness

 
duties
 

chimneys

 
vision

Morningside
 

appeared

 
furniture
 
article
 

whispered

 

meagre

 
realities
 

marched

 
disentangled
 

situation