Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/369

 The nurse picked up a towel and wiped her hands vigorously.

“I get so mad at this sort of thing sometimes,” she said, “that I want to go out and stand on the platforms and in the pulpits and I want to tell people some of the things I’ve seen and heard. I’d like to talk for one solid day to the girls of this country. I’d like to tell them of the heartache and the disappointment and the pain and the shame that they are fixing up for themselves in their future lives when they undertake to leave the straight and narrow path and allow themselves voluntarily to become the playthings of men; to let their honour be taken from them; to let their efficiency be wiped out; to let their years of training and the loving care that has been expended on them all go for nothing; to bring shame and disgrace on their parents, and to do to their own souls and to their own bodies what this poor dead girl has done to hers.”

“Evidently,” said the doctor, “you are one of the people who still believe in hell fire and damnation.”

“Yes,” said the nurse, “I do. And I believe in hell at its hottest and damnation at its damnedest for the men who are responsible for such anguish as we have seen this girl suffer and for such a death as we have watched her die. I’d like to take the men who cannot wait for honest marriage and a time when they are able to support a woman and give her a home and fortify her body to serve the functions of wifehood, of motherhood and home-making, men who upset everything and ruin everything for their own personal immediate self-gratification—I’d like to take