Page:Famous Single Poems (1924).djvu/194

 The Scarlet Woman was a phenomenon to which polite society at that time not only shut its eyes, but of which it pretended to be unaware. If she was pictured at all, it was as despairing and hopeless, ceaselessly bemoaning her fall from virtue, drinking the dregs of misery and want, with remorse ever gnawing at her heart, and finally dying of starvation amid wretched surroundings.

The idea that a woman who had taken the wrong turning could ever come back was anathema. In fact, society was banded together to prevent her coming back. To contend that such a woman had any claim to consideration, that she might be a good sort at bottom, and that she might eventually make a success of her life and be happy and contented in her last days was to incur grave suspicion. French fiction was held to be vicious and degraded because it occasionally developed such a theme. The fact that she died of consumption was the one thing that palliated the sins of Camille. Nobody knew exactly what to make of Trilby, though her death, too, was to her credit; but everybody agreed that for Little Billee to have married her would have been a crime against good morals. For sin must be punished.

“Beautiful Snow” laid the colors on exactly as society liked to imagine them. It was real movie stuff—the only wonder is that it has never