Page:Ann Veronica, a modern love story.djvu/271

 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