I've got a swell place. I want
to cut out this part of the game. I can get along without it.
You're going to move in with me, and stop this street business.
I make good money. You can have everything you want."
"I prefer to keep on as I am."
"What's the difference? Aren't you mine whenever I want you?"
"I prefer to be free."
"_Free!_ Why, you're not free. Can't I send you to the Island
any time I feel like it--just as I can the other girls?"
"Yes--you can do that. But I'm free, all the same."
"No more than the other girls."
"Yes."
"What do you mean?"
"Unless you understand, I couldn't make you see it," she said.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, doing up her hair,
which had partly fallen down. "I think you do understand."
"What in the hell do you want, anyhow?" he demanded.
"If I knew--do you suppose I'd be here?"
He watched her with baffled, longing eyes. "What is it," he
muttered, "that's so damn peculiar about you?"
It was the question every shrewd observant person who saw her
put to himself in one way or another; and there was excellent
reason why this should have been.
Life has a certain set of molds--lawyer, financier, gambler,
preacher, fashionable woman, prostitute, domestic woman,
laborer, clerk, and so on through a not extensive list of
familiar types with which we all soon become acquainted. And
to one or another of these patterns life fits each of us as we
grow up.
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