In Kate's presence
she became bolder than she had ever been with any one. One evening she told
the story of the thing that had happened to her that afternoon long before
on the farm, the afternoon when, her mind having been inflamed by the words
of Jim Priest regarding the sap that goes up the tree and by the warm
sensuous beauty of the day, she had wanted so keenly to draw close to some
one. She explained to Kate how she had been so brutally jarred out of the
feeling in herself that she felt was at bottom all right. "It was like a
blow in the face at the hand of God," she said.
Kate Chanceller was excited as Clara told the tale and listened with a
fiery light burning in her eyes. Something in her manner encouraged Clara
to tell also of her experiments with the school teacher and for the first
time she got a sense of justice toward men by talking to the woman who was
half a man. "I know that wasn't square," she said. "I know now, when I talk
to you, but I didn't know then. With the school teacher I was as unfair as
John May and my father were with me. Why do men and women have to fight
each other? Why does the battle between them have to go on?"
Kate walked up and down before Clara and swore like a man. "Oh, hell," she
exclaimed, "men are such fools and I suppose women are as bad. They are
both too much one thing. I fall in between. I've got my problem too, but
I'm not going to talk about it.
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