Page:I, Mary MacLane (1917).pdf/238

 about you. The tone of your life was of sun-shining simplicity and cleanness. There was no greed in you. You saw your way of life before you and lived it without degradation, with a positiveness of strength.'

It is as if my Soul's view and mine were infinitely separate from being narrowly paralleled. The portrait was mystically familiar: but not by her light.

Said I: 'Was she beautiful to look at?'

Said the Soul: 'You were beautiful in a pallid saintlike French manner—an uncertain type of beauty which fatigue or depression turns to plainness. You had but little light charm of prettiness. But you had what counts for more than beauty: the nerve and verve of attractiveness, the force and fascination of physical being, the fragrance, the flair of the deeply-sexed woman. In one phase you were constantly preying and preyed upon, but with high valors of attack and endurance.'

Said I: 'Did she live in peace—had she no times of suffering?'

Said the Soul: 'You had hours of violent bitter suffering. Paris has always accepted without countenancing the properousprosperous [sic] cocotte. And often you were infamously insulted at street-crossings by soldiers and sergeants-de-ville as you drove out in your small bright-colored carriage. And you were