Page:Scarlet Sister Mary (1928).pdf/229

 withered and shriveled. For months her eyes had poured tears, sometimes down her cheeks, sometimes through her heart. Her breast was sunken with misery, and her arms were weak and bony.

She was very cautious with it at first, afraid of it, uncertain of what it might do, but wicked as the charm undoubtedly was it had given back her lost youth, and brought her a strange satisfaction and happiness. Her flesh got back all its old smoothness, her body its old supple grace. She could laugh and sing while she worked. All her weariness left her, all her sadness and bitterness were gone, sorrow was far behind her.

Men are all alike when spring comes and the sunshine works its charm on them, whether they are people or beasts or bugs or fowls. The men grasshoppers fight to the death for a green six-legged lady, the men fish kill each other for the sake of a cold-blooded scaly length of meat, the cocks use spurs and beaks and claws to possess hens that are nothing but a bundle of warm cackling feathers. Human men are worse; they will risk Hell itself for a woman, not only in the spring when all things mate, but all through the year. They risk death to drink without being thirsty, and deal death to eat when they are not driven by real hunger.