"Yes," Paula said quickly, "I've seen something like that. How you will pity them when you are rested! It is hard for us to understand why such numbers are sacrificed like a common kind of plants. Nietzsche calls them 'the much-too-many.' But Nietzsche does not know quite so much as the Energy that wills them to manifest. It is dreadful, it is pitiful. It would seem, if God so loved the world--that He could not endure such pity as would be His at the sight of this suffering and degradation.... But you have no right to despise them--you, of all women. You're blooming up, up, up,--farther and farther out of the common--your blooming has been for years because you have kindled your mind. You must bloom for years still--that's the only meaning of your strength--because you will kindle your soul.... A woman with power like yours--has no right but to love the weak. Think what strength you have! There have been moments in the last half-hour that you have roused me to such a pitch of thinking--that I have felt weak and ineffectual beside you. You made me think sometimes of a great submarine--I don't know just why--flashing in the depths." "I don't think you see me right," Selma Cross said wearily. "Many times I have been lost in the dark. I have been wicked--hated the forces that made me. I have so much in me of the peasant--that I abhor. There have been times when I would have been a prostitute for a clean house and decent clothes to cover me, but men did not look at _The Thing_--only the old man, and one other!" Her eyes brightened, either at the memory or at the thought that she was free from the former.... "Don't wince and I'll tell you about that angel. You will be wiser. I don't want you for my friend, if I must keep something back. It was over three years ago, during my first real success. I was rather startling as Sarah Blixton in Heber's _Caller Herrin_. It was in that that I learned repression. That was my struggle--to repress.... Old man Villiers saw me, and was wise enough to see my future. 'Here's a girl,' I can imagine him saying, 'who is ugly enough to be square to one man, and she's a comer in spite of her face.' He showed where his check-book could be of unspeakable service. It was all very clear to me. I felt I had struggled enough, and went with him.... Villiers is that kind of New Yorker who feels that he has nothing left to live for, when he ceases to desire women. In his vanity--they are always vain--he wanted to be seen with a woman mentioned on Broadway. It was his idea of being looked up to--and of making other men envious. You know his sort have no interest--save where they can ruin.