lease not say anything more!"

But Doris was still smarting under recent admonition, and she meant to
make an end of Athalie's daily interference: "I will say what I like
when it's the truth," she retorted. "You are very free with your
unsolicited advice. And I'll say this, and it's true, that not one
girl in a thousand who accepts what you have accepted from Clive
Bailey, is straight!"

Athalie's tightening lips quivered: "Do you intimate that I am not
straight?"

"I didn't say that."

"You implied it."

There was a silence; Catharine lounged on the sofa, watching and
listening with interest. After a moment Doris shrugged her young
shoulders.

"Does it matter so much, anyway?" she said with a short, unpleasant
laugh.

"Does _what_ matter--you little ninny!"

"Whether a girl _is_ straight."

"Is that the philosophy you learn in your theatrical agencies?"
demanded Athalie fiercely. "What nauseating rot you do talk, Doris!"

"Very well. It may be nauseating. But what is a girl to do in a world
run entirely by men?"

"You know well enough what a girl is _not_ to do, don't you? All right
then,--leave that undone and do what's left."

"What _is_ left?" demanded Doris with a mirthless laugh. "There's
scarcely a job that a girl can hold unless she squares some man to
keep it--and keep--her!"

"Shame on you! I held mine for over five years," said Athalie with hot
contempt.

"Yes, and then along came the junior partner. You wouldn't square him:
you lost your job! There's always a junior partner in every
business--when there isn't a senior. There's nothing to it if you
stand in with the firm. If you don't--good night!"

"You managed to remain at the Egyptian Garden during the entire
season."

"But the fights I had, my dear, and the tricks I employed and the lies
I told and the promises I made! Oh, it's sickening--sickening! But--"
she shrugged--"what are you to do? Thousands of girls go queer
because they're forced to by starvation--"

"Nonsense!" cried Athalie hotly, "that is all stage twaddle and
exaggerated sentimentalism! I don't believe that one girl in a
thousand is forced into a dishonourable life!"

"Then why do girls go queer?"

"Because they want to; that's why! When they don't want to they
don't!"

Catharine, very wide-eyed, said solemnly: "But think of all the white
slaves--"

"They'd be that if they had been born to millions!" retorted Athalie.
"Ignorance and aptitude, that is white sl