“Don’t touch me,” she cried. “Can’t you see--the smut all over me?
Ain’t it in my face?”
Her voice broke. And like one possessed of sudden fury, she seized me
by the shoulder and shoved me out.
As the door slammed I heard sobbing--loosened torrents of woe. I sank
to my knees. A light not of this earth poured through the door that had
shut on me. A holiness enveloped me.
This woman had changed the world for me. I could love the people I
had hated yesterday. There was that something new in me, a light that
the dingiest rooming house could not dim nor all the tyranny of the
landlady shut out.
Vague, half remembered words flashed before me in letters of fire.
“Despised and rejected of men: a woman of sorrows acquainted with
grief.”