Susan herself marveled that there was not more trace of her underworld experience in her face and in her mind.She could not account for it.Yet the matter was simple enough to one viewing it from the outside.It is what we think, what we feel about ourselves, that makes up our expression of body and soul.And never in her lowest hour had her soul struck its flag and surrendered to the idea that she was a fallen creature.She had a temperament that estimated her acts not as right and wrong but as necessity.Men, all the rest of the world, might regard her as nothing but sex symbol; she regarded herself as an intelligence.And the filth slipped from her and could not soak in to change the texture of her being.She had no more the feeling or air of the _cocotte_than has the married woman who lives with her husband for a living.Her expression, her way of looking at her fellow beings and of meeting their looks, was that of the woman of the world who is for whatever reason above that slavery to opinion, that fear of being thought bold or forward which causes women of the usual run to be sensitive about staring or being stared at.Sometimes--in _cocottes_, in stage women, in fashionable women--this expression is self-conscious, or supercilious.It was not so with Susan, for she had little self-consciousness and no snobbishness at all.It merely gave the charm of worldly experience and expertness to a beauty which, without it, might have been too melancholy.
Susan, become by sheer compulsion philosopher about the vagaries of fat, did not fret over possible future dangers.
She dismissed them and put all her intelligence and energy to the business in hand--to learning and to helping Palmer learn the ways of that world which includes all worlds.
Toward the end of the voyage she said to him:
"About my salary--or allowance--or whatever it is---- I've been thinking things over.I've made up my mind to save some money.My only chance is that salary.Have you any objection to my saving it--as much of it as I can?"He laughed."Tuck away anything and everything you can lay your hands on," said he."I'm not one of those fools who try to hold women by being close and small with them.
I'd not want you about if you were of the sort that could be held that way.""No--I'll put by only from my salary," said she."I admit I've no right to do that.But I've become sensible enough to realize that I mustn't ever risk being out again with no money.It has got on my mind so that I'd not be able to think of much else for worrying--unless I had at least a little.""Do you want me to make you independent?"
"No," replied she."Whatever you gave me I'd have to give back if we separated.""_That_ isn't the way to get on, my dear," said he.
"It's the best I can do--as yet," replied she."And it's quite an advance on what I was.Yes, I _am_ learning--slowly.""Save all your salary, then," said Freddie."When you buy anything charge it, and I'll attend to the bill."Her expression told him that he had never made a shrewder move in his life.He knew he had made himself secure against losing her; for he knew what a force gratitude was in her character.
Her mind was now free--free for the educational business in hand.She appreciated that he had less to learn than she.
Civilization, the science and art of living, of extracting all possible good from the few swift years of life, has been--since the downfall of woman from hardship, ten or fifteen thousand years ago--the creation of the man almost entirely.Until recently among the higher races such small development of the intelligence of woman as her seclusion and servitude permitted was sporadic and exotic.Nothing intelligent was expected of her--and it is only under the compulsion of peremptory demand that any human being ever is roused from the natural sluggishness.But civilization, created _by_ man, was created _for_ woman.Woman has to learn how to be the civilized being which man has ordained that she shall be--how to use for man's comfort and pleasure the ingenuities and the graces he has invented.
It is easy for a man to pick up the habits, tastes, manners and dress of male citizens of the world, if he has as keen eyes and as discriminating taste as had Palmer, clever descendant of the supple Italian.But to become a female citizen of the world is not so easy.For Susan to learn to be an example of the highest civilization, from her inmost thoughts to the outermost penumbra of her surroundings--that would be for her a labor of love, but still a labor.As her vanity was of the kind that centers on the advantages she actually had, instead of being the more familiar kind that centers upon non-existent charms of mind and person, her task was possible of accomplishment--for those who are sincerely willing to learn, who sincerely know wherein they lack, can learn, can be taught.As she had given these matters of civilization intelligent thought she knew where to begin--at the humble, material foundation, despised and neglected by those who talk most loudly about civilization, art, culture, and so on.They aspire to the clouds and the stars at once--and arrive nowhere except in talk and pretense and flaunting of ill-fitting borrowed plumage.They flap their gaudy artificial wings; there is motion, but no ascent.Susan wished to build--and build solidly.She began with the so-called trifles.
When they had been at Naples a week Palmer said:
