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I MAGAZINE L
"A big man, nevertheless," minister.
Then they stepped out into the narrow backwash of an alley, where John Sterling, hampered by want of funds, ran his "Club."
Helen Rowland had never in her hothouse life seen such a place. She had never gone "slumming" even in the most fastidious sense. Something within her which tempered the dross with gold, warned her to keep her skirts clear of earth's miserable refuse. Warned her, if she would keep her mode of living "icily regular, splendidly null." Was this man to break thru? To play the vandal to the delicate, shimmering structure?
The "Club" was in session. John Sterling's protegees were dancing.
"They are horrible," said Helen
"Souls," he said, and smiled. She sensed his appeal to the soul in her under the fleshly swathings that had won her the prestige she had. But these fleshly swathings— these perfumed, red and white veilings of he#' spirit — these roses red and roses white — she had them to thank for all that life had given her. For money, liberator of the soul. For worship. For power. For triumph.
Dead Sea fruit . . . then where
He would often come upon her in her dressing-room, at her private 'phone, with that sense of listening, of waiting, upon her
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Rowland, and shuddered and drew nearer to the priestly broadcloth. The minister laid a reassuring hand on her cloaked arm. He sensed the shrinkage. He did not condemn it. His sad mouth smiled.
"They are souls," he minded her, gently.
"Souls . . . ■?" she repeated after him.
"They suffer," the minister said, "suffer, feel pain, feel joy. They live, give birth and die. Common clay. You ■ — and I — and them. Equal — in the sight of God."
"Equal ..." Helen Rowland was groping, was puzzled. God had been an immense but a very inchoate figure. Tonight, this man, with the zealot's burning eyes, the reformist's burning tongue, tonight this man had become God. "Equal," she repeated after him, "to you ?" 42
was fruit that was luscious? Where was sustenance? How should she live? How?
Some nameless thing caught at her heart, there in that bleak, ill-lighted hall. Something tore at her as she watched them dance and giggle oafishly; lanky, undernourished, gaunt-eyed girls; loutish, sallow, desperately facetious youths. A pity too vast for her throat tore at her. Her heart swelled till it burst long bondages, long confines. Humanity batted down reserves. She felt the terrific waste of it, of the flame of life, so bitterly paid for, so carelessly sustained. She felt a greater thing than her beauty. She felt a deeper thing than herself. Pain . . . birth . . . common clay . . . that was it, the whole of it, common clay. Humanity. To suffer , . .
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