She had found out
that a decent woman was one who respected her body and her
soul, that an indecent woman was one who did not, and that
marriage rites or the absence of them, the absence of financial
or equivalent consideration, or its presence, or its extent or
its form, were all irrelevant non-essentials. Yet--she
hesitated, knowing the while that she was risking a greater
degradation, and a stupid and fatal folly to boot, by shrinking
from the best course open to her--unless it were better to take
a dose of poison and end it all. She probably would have done
that had she not been so utterly healthy, therefore overflowing
with passionate love of life. Except in fiction suicide and
health do not go together, however superhumanly sensitive the
sore beset hero or heroine. Susan was sensitive enough;
whenever she did things incompatible with our false and
hypocritical and unscientific notions of sensitiveness,
allowances should be made for her because of her superb and
dauntless health. If her physical condition had been morbid,
her conduct might have been, would have been, very different.
She was still hesitating when Saturday night came round
again--swiftly despite long disheartening days, and wakeful
awful nights. In the morning her rent would be due. She had
a dollar and forty-five cents.
After dinner alone a pretense at dinner--she wandered the
streets of the old Tenderloin until midnight.
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