. And
then I had to carry her back, and rub her feet because they'd got cold.
She was rather a maddening sort of person, you know. She'd lead one on
to biting one's nails and tearing one's hair and then she'd laugh and
kiss her hand and run away with my sister into her bedroom. And they'd
both laugh. She understood the value of being a woman, did Violet. And
she didn't let herself go cheap--I used to get the key of the tantalus
and cart a whole decanter of whisky to bed to get over it. If she'd just
have let me kiss her--"

He paused, frowning reminiscently.

Marcella sighed, and laid a cool, firm hand on Louis's.

"Louis--I think I'm--cheap."

"So are air and water, dearie," he cried, with sudden passion that
surprised her.

"I don't think I'll ever understand men, though. Wine, women and song
they seem to lump together into a sort of tolerated degradation."

"I don't know much about song, but women and wine are certainly to be
lumped together. They're both an uncontrollable hunger. And they give
you a thick head afterwards! You say that Professor chap in his lectures
resents women. Of course he does. Don't you think I resent whisky?
Wouldn't any man resent the thing that makes dints in him, makes him
undignified, body and soul, and gives him a thick head and a sense of
repentance? I guess I look a pretty mucky spectacle when I'm drunk. I
see myself afterwards, and can imagine the rest. Well, a man in the
throes of a woman orgy is just as undignified--even if he doesn't
lurch--oh and slobber! I've never heard that your Professor drinks. That
doesn't happen to be his hunger, you see. But if he drank to the same
extent as he has love-affairs he'd be in an asylum now; and if he were a
woman he'd be on the streets! No woman--even if she were a Grand
Duchess--would be tolerated with the same number of sex affairs as a man
can have. She'd just have to be a prostitute out and out--without
choice--or else keep herself in hand."

"Like Aunt Janet," murmured Marcella to herself, "and come to acid
drops."

Aloud she said. "Louis--I wish you wouldn't tell me. I always think of
clever men like Kraill as gods and heroes--I hate to think they have
holes in them. They have such wonderful thoughts."

"That's the devil of it. I know they have. He has--Kraill. I've been to
his lectures and felt inspired to do anything. They most of them think
much better than they can do, that's about the size of it! I suppose we
all do that