But I can't do
anything for you as long as you drink this way. You'll have to
stay on the streets."
"That's where I want to stay."
"Well, there's something to be said for the streets," Freddie
admitted. "If a woman don't intend to make sporting her life
business, she don't want to get up among the swells of the
profession, where she'd become known and find it hard to
sidestep. Still, even in the street you ought to make a
hundred, easy--and not go with any man that doesn't suit you."
"Any man that doesn't suit me," said Susan. And, after a
pause, she said it again: "Any man that doesn't suit me."
The young man, with his shrewdness of the street-graduate and
his sensitiveness of the Italian, gave her an understanding
glance. "You look as if you couldn't decide whether to laugh
or cry. I'd try to laugh if I was you."
She had laughed as he spoke.
Freddie nodded approval. "That sounded good to me. You're
getting broken in. Don't take yourself so seriously. After
all, what are you doing? Why, learning to live like a man."
She found this new point of view interesting--and true, too.
Like a man--like all men, except possibly a few--not enough
exceptions to change the rule. Like a man; getting herself
hardened up to the point where she could take part in the cruel
struggle on equal terms with the men. It wasn't their
difference of body any more than it was their difference of
dress that handicapped women; it was the idea behind skirt and
sex--and she was getting rid of that.
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