men--proper women--and all they have
to do is to take them well. They've just got to keep white. But I'm
always trying to make things happen. And I get myself dirty...

"It's all dirt that washes off, dear, but it's dirt.

"The white unaggressive woman who corrects and nurses and serves, and is
worshipped and betrayed--the martyr-queen of men, the white mother....
You can't do that sort of thing unless you do it over religion, and
there's no religion in me--of that sort--worth a rap.

"I'm not gentle. Certainly not a gentlewoman.

"I'm not coarse--no! But I've got no purity of mind--no real purity of
mind. A good woman's mind has angels with flaming swords at the portals
to keep out fallen thoughts....

"I wonder if there are any good women really.

"I wish I didn't swear. I do swear. It began as a joke.... It
developed into a sort of secret and private bad manners. It's got to be
at last like tobacco-ash over all my sayings and doings....

"'Go it, missie,' they said; "kick aht!'

"I swore at that policeman--and disgusted him. Disgusted him!

"For men policemen never blush;
A man in all things scores so much...

"Damn! Things are getting plainer. It must be the dawn creeping in.

"Now here hath been dawning another blue day;
I'm just a poor woman, please take it away.

"Oh, sleep! Sleep! Sleep! Sleep!"

Part 2

"Now," said Ann Veronica, after the half-hour of exercise, and sitting
on the uncomfortable wooden seat without a back that was her perch by
day, "it's no good staying here in a sort of maze. I've got nothing to
do for a month but think. I may as well think. I ought to be able to
think things out.

"How shall I put the question? What am I? What have I got to do with
myself?...

"I wonder if many people HAVE thought things out?

"Are we all just seizing hold of phrases and obeying moods?

"It wasn't so with old-fashioned people, they knew right from wrong;
they had a clear-cut, religious faith that seemed to explain everything
and give a rule for everything. We haven't. I haven't, anyhow. And it's
no good pretending there is one when there isn't.... I suppose I
believe in God.... Never really thought about Him--people don't..
.. I suppose my creed is, 'I believe rather indistinctly in God the
Father Almighty, substratum of the evolutionary process, and, in a vein
of vague sentimentality that doesn't give a datum for anything at all,
in Jesus Christ, His Son.'...