It partook of the nature of sin. People who
did wicked things did them on impulse, and were sorry ever after;
but then it was too late.
As she grew older, she added something to that. Impulses of the
mind led to impulses of the body, and impulse was wrong. Passion
was an impulse of the body. Therefore it was sin. It was the one
sin one could not talk about, so one was never quite clear about
it. However, one thing seemed beyond dispute; it was predominatingly
a masculine wickedness. Good women were beyond and above it, its
victims sometimes, like those girls at the camp, or its toys, like
the sodden creatures in the segregated district who hung, smiling
their tragic smiles, around their doorways in the late afternoons.
But good women were not like that. If they were, then they were
not good. They did not lie awake remembering the savage clasp of a
man's arms, knowing all the time that this was not love, but
something quite different. Or if it was love, that it was painful
and certainly not beautiful.
Sometimes she thought about Willy Cameron. He had had very exalted
ideas about love. He used to be rather oratorical about it.
"It's the fundamental principle of the universe," he would say,
waving his pipe wildly.
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