She need take no trouble. She had only to appear, and
presently say something.
But gradually experiences gathered round her. After all, she had
to take trouble, she had to make efforts, because, she discovered with
astonishment and rage, she had to defend herself. That look, that
leaping look, meant that she was going to be grabbed at. Some of those
who had it were more humble than others, especially if they were young,
but they all, according to their several ability, grabbed; and she who
had entered the world so jauntily, with her head in the air and the
completest confidence in anybody whose hair was grey, began to
distrust, and then to dislike, and soon to shrink away from, and
presently to be indignant. Sometimes it was just as if she didn't
belong to herself, wasn't her own at all, but was regarded as a
universal thing, a sort of beauty-of-all-work. Really men . . . And
she found herself involved in queer vague quarrels, being curiously
hated. Really women . . . And when the war came, and she flung
herself into it along with everybody else, it finished her. Really
generals . . .
The war finished Scrap. It killed the one man she felt safe
with, whom she would have married, and it finally disgusted her with
love. Since then she had been embittered.
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