Paulina was undoubtedly slovenly. Her attempts at housekeeping--if
housekeeping it could be called--were utterly contemptible in the eyes
of Mrs. Fitzpatrick. These defects, however, might have been pardoned,
and with patience and perseverance might have been removed, but there
were conditions in Paulina's domestic relations that Mrs. Fitzpatrick
could not forgive. The economic arrangements which turned Paulina's
room into a public dormitory were abhorrent to the Irish woman's sense
of decency. Often had she turned the full tide of her voluble invective
upon Paulina, who, though conscious that all was not well--for no one
could mistake the flash of Mrs. Fitzpatrick's eye nor the stridency of
her voice--received Mrs. Fitzpatrick's indignant criticism with a
patient smile. Mrs. Fitzpatrick, despairing of success in her
efforts with Paulina, called in the aid of Anka Kusmuk, who, as
domestic in the New West Hotel where Mrs. Fitzpatrick served as
charwoman two days in the week, had become more or less expert in the
colloquial English of her environment. Together they laboured with
Paulina, but with little effect. She was quite unmoved, because quite
unconscious, of moral shock. It disturbed Mrs. Fitzpatrick not a
little to discover during the progress of her missionary labours that
even Anka, of whose goodness she was thoroughly assured, did not
appear to share her horror of Paulina's moral condition. It was the
East meeting the West, the Slav facing the Anglo-Saxon. Between their
points of view stretched generations of moral development. It was not
a question of absolute moral character so much as a question of moral
standards. The vastness of this distinction in standards was beginning
to dawn upon Mrs. Fitzpatrick, and she was prepared to view Paulina's
insensibility to moral distinctions in a more lenient light, when a
new idea suddenly struck her:

"But y're man; how does he stand it? Tell me that."