Jenny seemed quiet and drowsy for a short time and Babe knew that this was the result of a pipe of opium she had smoked up at Gert’s. Jenny only lived for the dreams she got out of poppy seed. Babe didn’t go in for that sort of thing . . . yet. She got too many kicks out of life in other ways. Jenny didn’t care for the boys as Babe did. Jenny only tolerated men because they went with dope and money. Babe was the type that thrived on men. She needed them. She enjoyed them and had to have them. Without them she was cold and alone. Nature creates different kinds of females and makes them perplexingly contrary to a moral law that assumes all female flesh to be the same. As a matter of fact, there are women so constituted that physically and mentally they have no desire for men and therefore become old maids, or enter nunneries. There are women who live a normal, conventional sex life and enter into marriage and motherhood. And then there are women so formed in body and mind that they are predestined to be daughters of joy. These women whom the French call “femmes amoureuses” are found not alone among women of the streets, but in every stratum of society. History’s pages reveal the power of these women that thrive on love, whose lives are centered on men.

Babe was born a femme amoureuse. Her idea was that if a man can have as many women as he wants, there is no reason why a woman should not do the same thing. She was one of those women who were put on this earth for men—not one man but many men. If a man didn’t go for her, she’d wonder what was the matter,—she would think she wasn’t appreciated. Not that everyone who tried for her would succeed, for she did all the picking.

Babe was non-moral. If she had tried to rationalize her attitude, she would have said that the whole world is selling something: goods, ability, personality. Just as a salesman would sell his goods with every ounce of energy and then sit back and enjoy his success, so Babe would enjoy selling herself and her personality. The manner in which she would walk by a crowd of men, or even one man, the toss of her head, the flash of her eye, the light of her smile, all were calculated to win patronage and the consumer’s dollar.

Every man she looked at she sized up as a fighter would an opponent. How would she handle him, outsmart him, outpoint him? It wasn’t hard circumstances—it wasn’t a background of disappointment—that made Babe what she was. She was just made for men.