Then I would see the wretched men and women who were huddled together in
the darkness on the steps to the river (whose ever-flowing waters must
have witnessed so many generations of human wreckage), and, glancing up
at the big hotels and palatial mansions full of ladies newly returned
from theatres and restaurants in their satin slippers and silk
stockings, I would wonder how they could lie in their white beds at
night in rooms whose windows looked down on such scenes.
But the sight that stirred me most (though it did not awaken my charity,
which shows what a lean-souled thing I was myself) was that of the
"public women," the street-walkers, as I used to call them, whom I saw
in Piccadilly with their fine clothes and painted faces, sauntering in
front of the clubs or tripping along with a light step and trying to
attract the attention of the men.
I found no pathos in the position of such women. On the contrary, I had
an unspeakable horror and hatred and loathing of them, feeling that no
temptation, no poverty, no pressure that could ever be brought to bear
upon a woman in life or in death excused her for committing so great a
wrong on the sanctity of her sex as to give up her womanhood at any call
but that of love.
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