The girl was deeply
under the impression made by the philosophy of the older woman; she
did not for the moment dream of denying its truth; but she stood
granite in a perfectly illogical denial of its implications in her own
case. She did not consciously revolt against the suggestion that she
renew her relations to Jerry Fiske, because with a united action of
all her faculties she refused utterly to consider it for an instant.
She would no more have been persuaded to see Jerry again, by a
consideration of the material advantages to be gained, than she could
have been persuaded to throw herself down from the housetop. That
much was settled, not by any coherent effort of her brain, but by a
co-ordination of every instinct in her, by the action of her whole
being, by what her life had made her.
But that certainty brought her small comfort in the blackness of the
hour. What hideous world was this in which she had walked unawares
until now! Mrs. Draper's jaunty, bright acceptance of it affected her
to moral nausea. All the well-chosen words of her sophisticated friend
were imbedded in the tissue of her brain like grains of sand in an
eyeball. She could not see for very pain. And yet her inward vision
was lurid with the beginning of understanding of the meaning of those
words, lighted up as they were by her experience of the day before,
now swollen in her distraught mind to the proportions of a nightmare:
"It's a weapon in the hand of a clever woman--it's not so bad once
you get the hang of managing it--it's a hold on men--" Sylvia turned
whiter and whiter at the glimpse she had had of what was meant by
Mrs.
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