And that is why an everlasting curse must surely hang over every creature, woman or man, who can be so unscrupulous as to exploit this temporary pessimism of healthy English female adolescence, and to turn it to negative account. For all those who, in the nefarious traffic of political or religious propaganda, avail themselves of it in order to turn a girl against Life finally and irrevocably, no punishment that can be imagined is sufficiently severe. Let them draw the unhealthy, negative girl over to their side; for it is better for all concerned if she and her like are converted to Life-Heresy; but let them leave the healthy positive girl alone, to fight her own battle with her high-school soul. But the healthy English “Flapper” is courageous and infinitely enduring. And this is the secret of her constant success against her high-school soul. For, what is it that really matters in her apparently uneven conflict between soul and body—a conflict, remember, in which all the weight of her environment and education is on the side of the soul? What matters is her body. Now her body knows quite well that everything is all right, and it has its tongue in its cheek the whole time, more particularly when the girl herself dallies with thoughts of the convent or of suicide. Besides, even her high-school soul has elements that can be persuaded and lured over to the other party. She is attractive, and is beginning to receive attention. The vanity in her soul, therefore, soon forms a league with the instincts of her body. Her soul also wants power, and this power her body guarantees to give her, if only she will snub the importunate high-school portions of herself, and neither balk nor overlook its designs. Above all, her soul is aching with curiosity concerning the secret of life, and the happiness of life; and as her body’s irrepressible lust of life is always at hand to lend support to any intellectual inquisitiveness, a combination of forces is effected that is as formidable as it is usually triumphant. Where is the party on earth that could survive all these defections from its ranks? That is why, if left alone, the negative side of her, her high-school, puritanical soul, is bound to be defeated; that is why she ultimately rises superior to her shame, her apprehension and her pessimism. But it would be a mistake to underrate her struggle, to minimize her qualms, or to scoff at her cryptic religiosity; her conviction that she is tremendously deep—all people are deep who have a fight raging in them—and that she stands on the brink of an even deeper abyss! Even the haughty manner in which she holds her inexperienced nose high in the air is instructive. She is trying her hardest to appear as if she were already above the struggle that is not yet over. Besides, all people who are in pain, not only feel deep and proud, but are deeper and prouder than those who do not suffer. Pain not only delves, it also distinguishes.