"I ask you, my dear, because I am thoroughly bad myself, and it's beyond me to understand why it's so important whether we are bad or good. And I thought maybe if you could tell me--did you know you were bad before you came and Electra found you out?"
Rose was looking kindly into the vivid face.
"No," she said, "I didn't think I was bad."
"That's it!" cried the old lady, in high triumph. "We don't any of us know it till they find us out. My dear, it's the most awful system--now, isn't it? You go on as innocent as you please, and suddenly they tell you you're a criminal. It's as if you made up your mouth to whistle, walking along the road, and somebody pounces on you and tells you whistling's against the law and claps you into jail."
Rose was smiling at her now, forgetful, for the moment, of her own coil, Madam Fulton seemed to her so pathetically young and innocent of everything save untamed desires.
"What under heavens does it mean?" Madam Fulton was insisting, with the greatest irritation.
"I must go now," said Rose. "I had to tell you."
Madam Fulton kept the detaining hand upon her knee.
"But where are you going?" she insisted. "Back to France?"
"No, I shall stay in America. I shall sing."
"Do you think anybody'll want to hear you?"
"You're a brazen hussy," she said. "But of all things, why did you come here with your little comedy in your hand, if you didn't mean to play it out?"
"I did mean to play it," said Rose, laying her head back against the high rail of the chair. She closed her eyes, for again she felt the tears coming. "But I--got sick of it."
"That's precisely it," she agreed. "We do get sick of it. We get sick of conduct, good or bad. They don't, the good ones. They go on clambering, one step after another, up that pyramid, and peering over the edge to see us playing in the sand, and occasionally, if they can get a brick, they heave it at us."
"Who are the good ones?" Rose asked languidly. "Electra?"
"Electra? She's neither hot nor cold. But she's of the kind that made the system in the first place."
"Bessie Grant? Yes, she's God's anointed, if there is a God. My dear, I love to talk with you, almost as much as with Billy Stark. You come and stay with me next winter."