But Valentine did not respond to his generous emotion.
"I thought she looked a very degraded young person," he said, distantly.
"And not interesting. The woman who is falling is interesting. The woman
who has reached the bottom, who has completely arrived at degradation, is
dull enough."
"But she is not utterly degraded, Val. For I know that she can see and
understand something of the horror of her own condition."
Valentine put his hand on Julian's shoulder.
"I know what you are thinking," he said.
"What?"
"That you would like to rescue this girl."
A dull blush ran over Julian's face.
"I don't know that I had got quite so far as that," he said. "Would it be
absurd if I had?"
"I am not sure that it would not be wrong. Probably this girl lives the
life she is best fitted for."
"You surely don't mean--"
"That some human beings are born merely to further the necessities
of sin in the scheme of creation? I don't know that. Nature, in certain
countries, demands and obtains pernicious and deadly snakes to live in
her bosom. Man demands and obtains female snakes to live in his bosom.
Are not such women literally created for this _m?tier_? How can one
tell?"
"But if they are unhappy?"
"You think they would be happy in purity?"
"I believe she would.
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