afterward—that man's evil, after all, is rudimentary compared to a worldly woman's; man's soul not so complicated, nor so irrevocably identified with his sensual organism. She could not avoid pondering miserably upon woman's innate love for far ventures into sensation, permitting these ventures to be called (if the world would) searches for the holy grail. The inevitable attraction for women which specialists of the body possess, actually startled her. Bellingham was one of these. On the surface of all his sayings, and all comment about him, was the bland, deadly insinuation that the soul expands in the pursuit of bodily health. About his name was the mystery of his age, whispers of his physical perfection, intimations of romantic affairs, the suggestion of his miraculous performances upon the emotions—the whole gamut of activities designed to make him the instant aversion of any normal member of his own sex. Yet the flock of females had settled about him, as they have settled about every black human plague—and glorious messiah—since the birth of days.

The thrilled, expectant look on several faces brought to Paula's mind the type of her sisters who relish being shocked; whose exaltations are patently those of emotional contact; who call physical excitement the glorifying of their spirit, and cannot be persuaded to confess otherwise. Woman as a negation for man to play upon never distressed her before with such direct and certain pressure. Here were women intent upon encountering a new sensation; women who devoutly breathed the name of Motherhood next to Godhood, and yet endured their pregnancy with organic rebellion and mental loathing; women who could not conceive of love apart from the embrace of man, and who imagine a "message" in deformed and salacious novels, making such books popular; women of gold-leaf culture whose modesty fastens with a bow—narrow temples of infinite receptivity....

Why had they come? In the perfect feminine system of information, the whisper had run: "Bellingham is wonderful. Bellingham tells you how to live forever. Bellingham teaches the renewal of self and has esoteric classes—for the few!" They had the sanction of one another. There was no scandal in being there openly, nor any instinct, apparently, to warn them that secret classes to discover how to live forever, had upon the surface no very tonic flavor. The digest of the whole matter was that revelations sooner or later would be made to a certain few, and that these revelations, which would be as fine oil upon the mental surfaces of many women near her, would act as acid upon the male mind generally.

In the sickening 

 Prev. P 9/220 next