o show off her imitation brooch. The child had
become feminized, she seemed older than ever.

"Why, Marie? Why?"

I couldn't restrain myself any longer. She leaned her elbow on the
table. When she raised her eyes, they were underlined with red and two
slow tears cut little pathways down the powder on her cheeks. I jumped
up and took her hands.

"I didn't like--I didn't know what to do with myself. It wasn't my
fault. No one cared about me...."

The great answer to the riddle. They all have this devouring need. What
they ask of love and look for in love is "someone to care about them."

"And then my hair, my Breton dress ... everybody stared at me. 'Aren't
you ashamed?' I used to think."

Another need--to be like other people, to be just as good as anyone
else--why not?--to have a bag like madam and hats like the hats you see
on the street....

"That's all," she added.

It was all. When women sell themselves, it is not poverty necessarily
that drives them to it. You don't know the hell of jealousy that burns
in all of us. There are some women who make themselves beautiful less
for the sake of pleasing men than for annoying other women.

"You must be unhappy."

"Yes, ma'am."

Is a poor little thing like Marie sensual? Women are rarely sensual. If
they are, they have not been so from the start; they have become so.

Her Breton accent came back. "Madam," she said in her singsong of four
years ago and in the same servile tone. Now she felt like relieving
herself and telling me everything. There was one man who really didn't
disgust her, but he was at the front, and if only he could come back! In
the meantime she practiced economies and perhaps they could fix up a
home and perhaps he would marry her. But if he did not come back,
then--

I had been to blame, I alone. I had been satisfied to deplore her grim
silence and do nothing. But I ought to have humiliated myself so as to
earn her smile. I ought by talking to her to have driven out of her
heart the longing to equal and surpass which prevents us all from being
human sisters. I should have....

We are all to blame for the prostitutes, we are the ones at whom the
stones should be cast. Nearly all of them are little Maries with the
craving for just one man, the peaceful healthy desire for a secure
hearth, but we tolerate poverty, and we don't know how to talk to each
other.

She put her package under her arm. I did not know what to do. I went up
to her, h